At the CIA, a fix to communications system that left trail of dead agents remains elusive
Yahoo News•December 6, 2018
More than five years after a major failure was identified in a system used to communicate with CIA agents on the ground around the world, the agency has yet to fully fix the problem, according to sources directly familiar with the matter.
Between around 2009 and 2013, the CIA’s online method of communicating with its human sources on the ground all over the world was tragically compromised — leading to the exfiltration, imprisonment or death of dozens of people spying for the agency, according to a November investigation by Yahoo News.
The failure started when Iranian officials used a double agent to trace back a series of websites the CIA was using to communicate with its sources. Iran then located, detained and in some instances executed CIA sources it identified using this system. The problem then spread to China, where roughly 30 CIA sources were eventually executed. Once Iran and China were able to locate users of these covert CIA platforms in their own countries, sources told Yahoo News, they were very likely able to discover a large number of CIA sources using similar systems worldwide.
But the fallout from that disaster, including internal battles at the CIA and struggles to replace and fix a complex web of interlocking technical systems, continues to rage on to this day, according to five former intelligence community sources familiar with the matter.
The CIA declined to comment for this piece
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A deeper issue was the lack of congruence between the covert communications platforms and the actual stated needs of CIA officers in the field, said former officials. DS&T employees, who seemed intent on “empire building,” had a “take it or leave it’ attitude,” said one former senior official.
However, introducing technology into sensitive operations is always risky, particularly in countries like Iran where the United States doesn’t have a dedicated diplomatic presence. Internet-based covert communications provide sources the opportunity to hide in plain sight, using innocuous seeming websites — but the systems are inherently less secure and prone to exposure, especially in placed where the internet is heavily surveilled.
https://news.yahoo.com/cia-fix-communications-system-left-trail-dead-agents-remains-elusive-100046908.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw