In a recent discovery, it was revealed that the NSA is planting trojan firmware on networking devices delivered to targeted customers. You can also read an interesting description from an NSA director about how this works.
A trove of documents, brought to light by National Security Agency archives released in Glenn Greenwald's book "No Place to Hide," shows how the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercepted computer networking devices that were about to be shipped. These devices include servers, routers and other network tools destined for targeted organizations.
The NSA's TAO implants firmware on them before they are handed over for surveillance and covert operations.
These Trojan horse firmwares are described by an NSA administrator as “some of the NSA’s most productive activities because they pre-emptively place access points on hard target networks around the world.
In the image, you can clearly see NSA employees opening the shipping box of a Cisco router, installing a beacon trojan firmware with a “load station” designed specifically for this project.
The NSA director describes this process as follows:
[su_quote]Shipments of computer network devices (servers, routers, etc.) delivered to our targets around the world are intercepted. They are then redirected to a secret location where Tailored Access Operations/Access Operations (AO-S326) personnel, with support from the Remote Operations Center (S321), allow beacon implants to be placed directly into our targets' electronic devices. These devices are then repackaged and re-positioned for transport to their original destination. All of this occurs with the support of our Intelligence Community partners and TAO's technical wizards.[/su_quote]
