The US National Security Agency (NSA) penetrated the systems of leading German technology and communications companies as part of a global operation seeking to track all of the planet’s data flows and Internet-capable electronic devices, according to NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published jointly in Der Spiegel and the Intercept.
The leaked NSA slides reveal that the agency infiltrated data-capturing software into the systems of major German firms including Deutsche Telekom, Netcologne, Stellar, Cetel and IABG as part of a program codenamed Treasure Map. The slides display the targeted German firms as nodes in a worldwide network, with nodes highlighted red to indicate the maintenance of NSA “Collection Access Points” on their servers.
Treasure Map is an astonishingly expansive electronic surveillance and data mapping operation conceived by the NSA and the British GCHQ as “a near real-time, interactive map of the global internet,” according to the documents. The information has been made accessible to the “five eyes” alliance that also includes canada, australia and New Zealand.
Der Spiegel writes that its aim is to map “every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world—every smartphone, tablet and computer…”
Treasure Map “ingests approximately 16-18 million trace routes per day” according to NSA documents. By endlessly analyzing the connections between Internet-linked data sources, the agency is seeking to “map the entire Internet” and locate “Any device, anywhere, all the time” through continuous updating of a comprehensive global Internet map, the slides state.
The program, described by the Intercept as a “Google Earth for global internet traffic, a bird’s eye view of the planet’s digital arteries,” processes “30+ gigabytes of additional data added and replaced per day” and has “new capabilities delivered every 90 days,” according to the leaked documents.
The information gives the NSA, the GCHQ and its allies broader powers to monitor individuals within their countries as well as those targeted for attack. The article in Der Spiegel noted, “In addition to monitoring one’s own networks as well as those belonging to ‘adversaries,’ Treasure Map can also help with ‘Computer Attack/Exploit Planning.’ As such, the program offers a kind of battlefield map for cyber warfare.
