NSA facing difficult questions over Snowden security lapse
America’s National Security Agency is facing fresh questions as to the efficacy of its internal security procedures after it emerged that whistle blower Edward Snowden used off the shelf software to raid its computer networks.
The inexpensive and freely available code was used to systematically plunder the agency of sensitive information which was subsequently leaked to media outlets.
During this operation Snowden was challenged by officials but palmed them off by claiming that ‘the automated crawler actions were legitimate.
Using this technique Snowden is thought to have snaffled as many as 1.7m documents, despite a heightened state of consciousness within government as to the fallibility of such systems in the wake of the Bradley Manning leaks.
Detection software to stop such raids has been installed at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade but was not present at the technology contractor with whom Snowden was employed.