How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network 339
sundling writes "There are interesting articles here(1) and here(2)
on software espionage against the Soviets.
In the Ronald Reagan era, a Soviet spy network (Line X Network) was looking to steal software to run oil pipelines. The CIA found out what they were trying to steal and fed them bogus versions. This is of course not the only time the CIA has done this.
... An article on the ethics of programming mentions this very topic and the moral implications." Update: 03/02 09:22 GMT by T : Oops -- this is a dupe.
Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:3, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/115
Even sent two messages to the 'on duty editor'. Not that it matters, apparently. Considering this is like story 7 in a row or so for him, spanning the last several hours, I suspect it's bedtime for someone...
Not to sound like a broken record (even if slashdot regularly does), but it isn't news a month later, guys....
Re:Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks for sending the notes; it looks like the note-to-editor system is down at the moment, unfortunately. It *is* bedtime for me, but I was actually sitting there waiting, reading email
Sorry, I missed this one the first time around.
timothy
Re:Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:2)
I liked GrodinTierce (571882) catching the humor of the word 'dupe' in the title, the fact that 30 minutes later it's still not being admitted as a dupe, and my gaffe of saying that a several-years-old story isn't news a month later.
Is 'Daddypants@slashdot.org' *ALWAYS* the mailto for the on-duty editor? That's fscking hysterical!
Oh, and I sincerely hope that somewhere out t
Re:Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dupe. Even warned Timothy. (Score:2, Funny)
You don't know the half of it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Separately, learn some of the facts [amazon.com] surrounding JFK's assassination (and the likes who go to no end to increase their power) and you'll get a feel for what goes on behind closed doors. It's very depressing.
Re:You don't know the half of it... (Score:2, Insightful)
You forgot (3) Having plenty of guys like you to do the dirty work. Good on ya!
Re:You don't know the half of it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Dec 7. (Score:5, Informative)
1: Range. Japanese ships were not thought to have the range to come all the way to Pearl. Much less undetected. They developed refueling techniques to make this possible.
2: Bombs vs Battleships. Conventional bombs of the day were *not* able to affect a Battleship ( the ship used to project power in those days, the day of the carrier was not yet there, they were mainly seen as good for scouting ( battlecruiser replacements ) ). The deck armour was too thick. So, what about Arizona, you ask? Good question. They converted 16" Battleship shells ( the very items designed to go through the deck armour, *and* the much thicker side ( hull ) armour into bombs by adding fins. Then they dropped them from approx 10k meters so that they would have the KE to do the job. In that day, only torpedoes were thought to have what it took to sink a battleship. Which leads me to:
3: Topedoes. The harbor was thought to be safe from attack by torpedoes, as it was only about 40 feet deep ( just a bit deeper than the draught of the ships, IIRC ). This is important as the torpedoes of that day usually sunk to about 75 feet after being dropped from the airplane. The British had pulled off a similar raid at Taranto against the Italian navy using this, but that harbor was deeper than Pearl. The Japanese attached breakaway fins to the torpedoes to arrest their fall on hitting the water, keeping them from sinking so far, and thereby made the attack possible.
Not to mention that the CIA did not exist in those days.
And while I too would like to see our intellegence agencys perform better, I would suggest that it is altogether too easy to armchair QB what they do. I am sure that you have been through something that you did not see coming, but in hindsight, you kick yourself because it was blindingly obvious ( from that side of the event ). Go try to do that job before you kick them too hard about how they have done it.
Woops! (Score:4, Funny)
How appropriate... (Score:3, Funny)
Original Article (Score:5, Informative)
The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line is, the CIA has always had the edge in technology, but the KGB still had an advantage in human intelligence. They had far better human recruitment than the CIA ever did. (And for those who really follow this stuff, you probably already know that human intelligence is one thing that is very sorely lacking in our war on terror today.)
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:5, Insightful)
The US's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness as it relates to the human side of intelligence. It's our diverse society.
We don't have Arab Americans knocking down the CIA's door to go to work for them. And white people just don't blend in everywhere. During the Cold War black intelligence agents sometimes felt that their career growth was stunted because the best assignments were in the USSR and black people just didn't fit in there.
We need to go to war against Canada or England so we can make better use of our human capital.
LK
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:2, Informative)
Modded insightful 4 when I read it and it speaks volumes of America.
Maybe there is a reason Arab americans aren't knocking on the door to join US intelligence services.
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:3, Funny)
We don't have Arab Americans knocking down the CIA's door to go to work for them. And white people just don't blend in everywhere.
How about the old joke about US espionage in Soviet Union?
"A CIA agent had been trained for years to infiltrate the KGB. He had learned fluent Russian, knew everything there was to know about living and working in Russia etc. Then they smuggled him across the border.
He arrived at a small town on the countryside and asked the first person he could find for directions. The m
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh huh. Even there you'll have some difficulties, because you won't be able to talk about the loss of the Jets, Nordiques and Stubbies. Or discuss the greatness of Gretzky, Lafleur, Rick Mercer, Peter Gzowski (may he rest in peace), the NFB, and the Tragically Hip.
All most Americans know about Canada is Shania Twain and Celine Dion. And we have snow. And live in Igloos.
And even after two years living in England, I only know a fraction of British culture. I can talk about Blackadder and The Office, but know almost nothing about the Ealing comedies or Tommy Cooper for example. And my accent is a dead giveaway; even if I did pick up a proper UK accent, there's class and regionalization to factor in as well. After all, how much success did the Abwehr have against the UK in the war?
My point is that a proper human intelligence organization takes a very long time to build up, unless people jump to your side for ideological reasons, you'll have years of ingrained history to deal with.
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:3, Funny)
That's not true. Ren and Stimpy taught me that Canada reeks of trees and that their number one export is dirt, so there!
jason
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:2)
If you know about Tommy Cooper then you'll fit in, just like that. No, not like that, like that.
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:2)
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:2)
And I completely agree with your post as well. I've spent a fair bit of time hiking in New England (the White Mountains, Adirondacks, etc.) and found that most people there went to Canada about as often as I went to the States. There certainly is a lot of kinship and shared values between upper New England and Eastern/Central
HUMINT is done with locals not with own operatives (Score:4, Informative)
Demographics of UK and Canada (Score:2)
Only 2% of Canada's population [statcan.ca] and 4% of Britain's population [statistics.gov.uk] are black, compared to 13% of the U.S. population.
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:2)
I always thought it was hilarious in the original Mission Impossible TV series when they were all in disguise in some mythical Pottsylvanian "Eastern Bloc" country that Barnie, their engineer, a very dark skinned negro, could blithely walk around the streets with no one blinking an eye.
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:2)
Re:The CIA always had the edge in technology (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, deliberately inserting bugs into a software program to cause the destruction of a natural gas facility and billions in economic damage would almost certainly be called terrorism today. Except, of course, it's by definition not terrorism if the US government does it.
I don't mean to burst your bubble.... (Score:5, Insightful)
....but we all know how US intelligence brilliantly prevented the 9/11 strikes [11-sept.org] with its all tech, no human intellignece approach. It seems to me that US intelligence will have to do some rethinking on the subject of doing completely without human intel sources. If 9/11 and the whole Iraqi WMD mess have proven anything it is firstly, that satilites and other spytechnology no matter how advanced will never completely replace the humble human traitor and secondly that no matter how good you are at running high tech spy gear it does not qualify your to run human spies. That is a very special skill and hard to learn. The CIA cold do worse than to take a leaf out of the books of the KGB when it comes to recruiting human spies, it is a skill the CIA has all but lost.
Re:I don't mean to burst your bubble.... (Score:3, Insightful)
However I suppose that argument could be used for just about anything
Re:I don't mean to burst your bubble.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I don't mean to burst your bubble.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't mean to burst your bubble.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The fiasco over WMD in Iraq was largely a failure of HUMINT. We had LOTS of Human Intelligence in Iraq (defectors, POW's captured by the Kurds, as well as assets within the Iraqi military). A fair number of their stories made it into the press so we know from newspaper accounts at least some of the HUMINT that the CIA was getting out of Iraq. They were all telling us that th
OMG they're doing it to their own citizens too! (Score:2, Funny)
Well *obviously* (Score:2, Funny)
coincidence? (Score:4, Funny)
Linux...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Re:coincidence? (Score:2)
what about microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't there also a blackout on the entire Eastern US due in-part to improper response by the control software to the outages that initially started at First Energy?
Isn't it also possible all these email worms, viruses, and trojans might be some form of espionage by workers planted at Microsoft?
software as communication (Score:3, Interesting)
if one accepts this definition he/she should definitly think that programming is highly ethical activity.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural-gas pipeline
I find this very hard to believe. *If* you actually made a system so fragile, that explosions could be triggered by software, would you install software you stole from the enemy on that system?
Besides, if it was indeed possible to trigger an explosion, it had to be very proprietary code. Didn't the russians wonder why code they stole from the enemy would run on their own computers?
I'm just wondering, not trying to say that this might not be exactly what happened.
not that hard (Score:2)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the late Eighties the former GDR (East Germany) cloned the VAX processors and an 1Mbit memory chip to build VAX clones. If you can get hold of an official report of the '89 Leipzig spring trade fair (Leipziger Fruehjahrsmesse), you will note all that bragging about the 32bit processor and the 1Mbit RAM. In some not so tech savvy newspapers they even messed it up and talked about the 32bit memory chip
As a pupil at an GDR public school I was working on a small scientific project, and I was typing my report on an A7100 computer, which was basicly a CP/M clone featuring an U880 CPU (Z80 clone). Some series of the A7100 had even original Z80s built in, if the GDR could get hold of them. I used the textprocessor (command: tp), and WordStar came up. There was the REDABAS relational Database system (dBaseII), and TurboPascal 3.0 as development environment. One of the first actions Borland made after the fall of the Berlin wall was to legalize all the TurboPascal 3.0 clones installed in schools and offices throughout the GDR.
In the Rossendorf Nuclear Research facility the two main process computers were actual Commodore AMIGA 2000 computers, bought for an insane amount of money (about 120,000 east german Mark, about 10 times a year's net salary for the average East german) from the east german tax authorities, which probably confiscated them at the inner german border as contrabande.
Most cars built behind the Iron courtain had west european roots. The russian Lada cars were licensed FIAT 123, modified in later series. The russian Moskvich, Volga and Pobeda brands were derived from GM Opel Kapitaen or GM Opel Rekord projects. In Poland the FIAT 125 and FIAT 126 were built as Polski FIAT, and the Pobeda was still produced as Warszawa. The romanian Dacia cars were in fact licensed Renault 12, and the Olcit compact was a Citroen Visa. The FIAT 128 was built in Yugoslavia as Zastava (in the plant which later created the Yugo!), and the east german Wartburg came from a Renault built assembly line (even though the construction based on the pre-WWII DKW Meisterklasse).
(Interestingly though the czech brands Skoda and Tatra were genuine czech products...)
If someone tells you that something behind the Iron Curtain was cloned from a western product, better believe it was cloned down to the last screw. Don't expect any incompatibilities
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the office my father's colleagues were doing all the same for their children, moulding connector clones out of Silicon, building joysticks from raw plastic and microswitches (I had a "joy plate", basicly a plastic plate sitting on a spring with four microswitches, each at one side, and you operated it by putting the whole hand on it. Unbeatable at sport games
The same improvisation was at work nearly everywhere in the Eastern Block. What didn't fit was made fitting without too much consideration about security issues or similar.
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Digital even inscribed "VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best" into the silicon mask of one of the chips in Cyrillic. See here [fsu.edu] for a picture.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Motorcycles are another story. Russian bikes are not much to speak of, and the Dneper [dnepr.ru] and Ural [imz-ural.com] owe a lot to older BMW designs. However the East German MZ [micapeak.com] was an innovative and scrappy marque, enjoying racing success well into the 1960s. In fact, it was the defection of MZ rider Ernst Degner to Suzuki in 1961 that gave the Japanese rotary valve technology, making their own two-strokes comp
That's what you get... (Score:5, Funny)
23c. In no way do the authors of this software take responsibility or blame for any pipeline explosions that may or may not occur through the normal use of this software.
So.... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:So.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is still a difference between an undeclared war and an act of terrorism mind you. Much as i disagree with the US role in some of the conflicts mentioned, i will never accept terrorism as an acceptable means of furthering ones goals.
The US attacks on Afghanistan or Iraq were obviously undeclared wars rather than terrorism as they target strategic and military installations, though with something like the "decapitation attempts" on Hussein it's getting a bit shady legally, but still a very different kettle of fish from terrorism.
Even the frequently cited israeli raids into palestinian territory don't pass muster for terrorism, though bulldozing or attacking the families of palestinian terrorist comes uncomfortably close to revenge terrorist attacks. (ie the people targetted are not the perpetrators and the aim is to terrorise families to the point that no-one would dare commit an attack for fear of his family meeting the same fate, which is a similar strategy to what terrorists use)
I think the reason the US or Israel (or the UK, France, etc.) get so much grief for their role is that a much higher standard is expected of a modern democracy compared to some shady underworld groups (Ie if your three year old hits another child you tell him off/send him to his room/... , but if it's an adult he goes to jail because you have much higher expectations of an adult responsible party...
excuse the unnecessarily long ramblings...
Ponxx
Re:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
London, Paris, Stalingrad. Look at what the Japanese did in China. Before that the Romans, the Huns, Napoleon, every British King VS the Scotts - That is just the way that war used to work.
In fact if you look at the Palestinians against the Jews (and the Jews against the Palestinians), Haiti, El Salvador, Somalia, Bosnia - it still seem
Re:So.... (Score:2)
Re:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
strange, huh?
No No No (Score:3, Insightful)
Why else would the Supreme Court allow him to kidnap and hold foreign nationals indefinitely in Cuba in direct violation of both the spirit and the letter of our constituion, on the grounds that it doesn't apply to people unle
Re:No No No (Score:2)
Oh, dear lord... (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to "think outside the box" and see the Cold War for what it really was: unilateral aggression by the USA and CIA against the poor, defenseless USSR and KGB! Seriously, it's one thing when you're talking about the USA bullying some third world country, but comparing that to the Cold War is apples and oranges (and a cheap attempt to score some anti-American karma points). And if you want to know which of these two formerly-equally-matched superpowers was the real terrorist regime, put it this way: there wasn't exactly a flood of Americans expatriating to Moscow to flee CIA gulags.
Cheers,
IT
Re:Oh, dear lord... (Score:2)
Last time I checked, 'terrorism' meant wanton violence and destruction desinged to spread terror and confusion to maximum effect. Nothing to do with who commits the acts or whom the acts are committed against. That includes assasinations and sabotoge.
The US and the CIA did (and are probably doing) things that if they were commited against them, would be labelled 'terrorism' in a New York minute. Just because the USSR were evil or terrorist themselves
Re:So.... (Score:2)
Aren't gov't sponsored terrorists typically called spies? Forgive my naieveness, I just watched True Lies.
My comment is in no way meant to glamourize what spies are, but rather to point out that labelling them terrorists is sort of like labelling script kiddies as hackers.
Re:So.... (Score:2)
So... who did we assasinate? (Score:2)
Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I must have missed the part of the story that mentioned an assassination.
Also, while the term "terrorism" is fairly loose it does have SOME meaning. Terrorism is the use of violence to create fear in a population in order to intimidate or coerce a society or government. In this case the violence was rather passive (we passively let the soviets steal malware) The "sabotage" was not intended to cause fear in the general population or even among the leadership aside from a fear that stolen technology may be booby-trapped.
Why is it ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And don't just say "because, thats the way it is".
Whenever I hear about tactics like this from the very government that is supposed to represent 'higher values', I'm reminded that government is The Perfect Con.
Re:Why is it ... (Score:2)
The Case for Open Source Software. (Score:5, Interesting)
Those Russkies should've broken out their debuggers on these binaries before putting them into operation
they (Score:2)
fact or fiction? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have the feeling that someone is trying to feed us a bogus story. I doubt there is a way to determine if any of this has actually happened.
corroboration (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:5, Informative)
And I really wouldnt like to be in the shoes of the morons who manage to convince people that they planted that software. If by some weird coincidence that thing was within 10 miles of any of the control rooms of that pipeline which exploded. I can just imagine 400 beraved families suing the Uncle Sam under the Patriot act for ... ahem... terrorist acts.
Oh and to make things more interesting, as this [medbc.com] medical journal indicates, the US actually sent doctors to treat the poor burned children...
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2, Insightful)
1982 != 1989
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2)
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2)
Considering how forthcoming the Soviets were about Chernobyl, you're probably right. Or wrong.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2)
Considering how forthcoming the Soviets were about Chernobyl
3kt explosions are as rare and easilly spotted as they get. And all those spy satellites operated by all those nations (Japan, China, NATO) would pick up something that big. That is why international disaster databases end up with this data sooner or later. And we are talking a 1982 event in a long gone former empire.
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2)
Yes but they would also pick up an underground nuke test or a geological activity. Their data alone is useless and there are many more such seismic events that occured over the decades.
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:5, Informative)
Also as some former Soviet officials mentioned when questioned about this nonsense back when the original story broke, said that if that story were true, as Safire indicated the software easilly traced back to its source (USA), in 1982 political climate the Soviet leadership would respond to something like that as an act of war and would at the very least destroy US operated oil plants within easy reach of Soviet bombers or even let loose ICBMs if things went out of control.
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that they had the skills to build that complex system yet they were incapable of writing the software for the controller???
Yeap, it makes sense because Soviet programmers are incompetent and American programmers are the shiat.
This smells propaganda and nationalism to me, but unfortunately some people will buy it.
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2)
The Soviets had some of the most brilliant mathematicians and engineers in the world. There is absolutely no question about that.
But Soviets were living in 1944... "heavy" industry was the mantra of the Soviets. While the US spent billions on developing computer technology, the Soviets built tractor plants and tanks.
I choose no 1. BS, total absolute BS!!!!. (Score:3, Informative)
There was a computer control system but all it did was really a glorified remote. You could setup some equations like
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2)
Look up "ex post facto". And not to nitpick, but the PATRIOT act does not provide for civil liability, I believe.
Re:Bullshit or massive lawsuits. Take your pick. (Score:2, Insightful)
Common practice. (Score:4, Funny)
Trust solves many problems. (Score:2, Insightful)
Governments need to decide whether they want to be trusted. If they want trust, then they should avoid any hint of sneakiness.
The U.S. government secretly overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran, President Mossadegh. That started a chain of events [futurepower.net] that eventually continued with retaliation: The destruction of the World Trade Center.
Osama bin Laden cannot be effective in being violent if he does not have support. He is far less likely to have support for his violent schemes if people ge
blatant flamebait, but im biting (Score:3, Insightful)
yea, because as history has shown us, humans are by default an extremely trusting species, they would never do under-handed, sneaky, or other-wise shady actions unto each other, expecialy not their friends.... no... this "un" trustfullness is the work of... the russians!!
Governments need to decide whether they want to be trusted. If they want trust, then they should avoid any hint of sneakiness.
Trust cannot be ascertained by "not" being sneaky. Trust is for the most p
Line X? (Score:2, Funny)
It's a good job... (Score:3, Funny)
Line X ? (Score:3, Funny)
Communists using Line X ? Darl should be able to get a lot of mileage out of this one!
Am I the only one that finds it funny.... (Score:2)
Also at the end of the article:
Tyson Gill is the director of information technology at Alitum, Inc., in San Diego, California. He also teaches Visual Basic and Microsoft.Net programming at the University of California, San Diego. He is well known for his influential presentations on design, architecture, planning, and coding. Tyson is the author of Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering
They
I heard of something like this... (Score:3, Funny)
A bogus story about bogus software (Score:3, Informative)
Ethics (Score:3, Insightful)
Engineers, Doctors, Priests, Teachers and Lawyers all have ethical standards.
Software developers and contractors should also, at least they could have some liability.
As to where to draw the line, ethically that is a question for philosophers, legally it belongs to lawmakers and the courts.
My view is that feeding bad code is just an attack, and of a similar ethical stance to a bomb or similar acts. Making the bad code would be the same as making the bomb. Making shoddy code would be the same as a shoddy bookshelf.
Sounds about right (Score:3, Funny)
Gee, I guess GNU really is communist. B)
Not the biggest explosion... (Score:2)
This may be a dupe article, but... (Score:2)
I love this idea (Score:2)
Think about it: this is a situation where people were actively encouraged to write buggy code! Finally, a way to harness the unique talents of the average Slashdotter.
Wrong pronunciation! (Score:2)
It figured that Slashdot of all places would know, it's not pronounced "Line X," it's pronounced "Lynn-Ux"! =P
Might as well add another urban legend (Score:3, Funny)
I've never been able to verify this story.
Think about it (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Think about it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:McBride, Ballmer, Taylor and friends... (Score:2)
I'm batting a 1000.