Zero Days Page #7

Cyber command extends

that capability

by saying that they will then

take responsibility to attack.

Hayden:
NSA has no

legal authority to attack.

It's never had it,

I doubt that it ever will.

It might explain why

U.S. cyber command

is sitting out at

fort Meade on top of

the national security agency,

because NSA has the abilities

to do these things.

Cyber command has the authority

to do these things.

And "these things" here

refer to the cyber-attack.

This is a huge change

for the nature of

the intelligence agencies.

The NSA was supposed

to be a code-making

and code-breaking operation

to monitor the communications

of foreign powers

and American adversaries

in the defense

of the United States.

But creating a cyber command

meant using

the same technology

to do offense.

Once you get inside an

adversary's computer networks,

you put an implant

in that network.

And we have tens of thousands

of foreign computers

and networks that the

United States put implants in.

You can use it to monitor

what's going across

that network and you can use it

to insert cyber weapons,

malware.

If you can spy on a network,

you can manipulate it.

It's already included.

The only thing you need

is an act of will.

NSA source:

I played a role in Iraq.

I can't tell you

whether it was military or not,

but I can tell you

NSA had combat support teams

in country.

And for the first time,

units in the field

had direct access to NSA intel.

Over time, we thought

more about offense

than defense, you know,

more about attacking

than intelligence.

In the old days, sigint units

would try to track radios,

but through NSA in Iraq,

we had access

to all the networks

going in and out

of the country.

And we hoovered up

every text message,

email, and phone call.

A complete surveillance state.

We could find the bad guys,

say, a gang making ieds,

map their networks,

and follow them in real time.

Soldier:
Roger.

NSA source:
And we could

lock into cell phones

even when they were off

and send a fake text

from a friend,

suggest a meeting place,

and then capture...

Soldier:
1A, clear to fire.

...or kill.

Soldier:
Good shot.

Brown:
A lot of the people

that came to cyber command,

the military guys,

came directly from

an assignment

in Afghanistan or Iraq,

'cause those are the people

with experience

and expertise in operations,

and those are the ones you want

looking at this

to see how

cyber could facilitate

traditional military operations.

NSA source:

Fresh from the surge,

I went to work at NSA in '07

in a supervisory capacity.

Gibney:
Exactly where

did you work?

NSA source:
Fort Meade.

You know, I commuted

to that massive complex

every single day.

I was in tao-s321,

"the roc."

Gibney:
Okay, the tao,

the roc?

Right, sorry. Tao is

tailored access operations.

It's where

NSA's hackers work.

Of course,

we didn't call them that.

Gibney:
What did you call them?

NSA source:
On net operators.

They're the only people at NSA

allowed to break in

or attack on the Internet.

Inside tao headquarters

is the roc,

remote operations center.

If the U.S. government

wants to get in somewhere,

it goes to the roc.

I mean, we were flooded

with requests.

So many that we could

only do about, mm,

30% of the missions that were

requested of us at one time,

through the web

but also by hijacking

shipments of parts.

You know, sometimes the CIA

would assist

inputting implants

in machines,

so once inside

a target network,

we could just...

Watch...

Or we could attack.

Inside NSA was a strange

kind of culture,

like,

two parts macho military

and two parts cyber geek.

I mean, I came from Iraq,

so I was used to,

"yes, sir. No, sir."

But for the weapons

programmers

we needed more

"think outside the box" types.

From cubicle to cubicle,

you'd see lightsabers,

tribbles,

those naruto action figures,

lots of

aqua teen hunger force.

This one guy,

they were mostly guys,

who liked to wear

a yellow hooded cape,

he used a ton of gray legos

to build a massive death star.

Gibney:
Were they all working

on stuxnet?

NSA source:

We never called it stuxnet.

That was the name invented

by the antivirus guys.

When it hit the papers,

we're not allowed to read about

classified operations,

even if it's in

the New York times.

We went out of our way

to avoid the term.

I mean,

saying "stuxnet" out loud

was like saying "Voldemort"

in Harry Potter.

The name that

shall not be spoken.

Gibney:
What did

you call it then?

The natanz attack,

and this is out there already,

was called

olympic games or og.

There was a huge operation

to test the code

on plcs

here are fort Meade

and in sandia, new Mexico.

Remember during the bush era

when Libya turned over

all the centrifuges?

Those were the same models

the iranians got

from a.Q. Khan.

P1's.

We took them to oak Ridge

and used them

to test the code

which demolished the insides.

At dimona, the Israelis also

tested on the p1's.

Then, partly by using

our intel on Iran,

we got the plans for

the newer models, the ir-2's.

We tried out different

attack vectors.

We ended up focusing on ways to

destroy the rotor tubes.

In the tests we ran,

we blew them apart.

They swept up the pieces,

they put it on an airplane,

they flew it to Washington,

they stuck it in the truck,

they drove it through the gates

of the white house,

and dumped the shards out

on the conference room table

in the situation room.

And then they invited

president bush

to come down

and take a look.

And when he could pick up

the shard

of a piece of centrifuge...

He was convinced

this might be worth it,

and he said,

"go ahead and try."

Gibney:
Was there legal concern

inside the bush administration

that this might be

an act of undeclared war?

If there were concerns,

i haven't found them.

That doesn't mean that

they didn't exist

and that some lawyers

somewhere

weren't concerned about it,

but this was

an entirely new territory.

At the time, there were really

very few people

who had expertise specifically

on the law of war and cyber.

And basically what we did was

looking at, okay,

here's our broad direction.

Now, let's look...

Technically what can we do

to facilitate

this broad direction?

After that, maybe the...

I would come in

or one of my lawyers

would come in and say,

"okay, this is what we may do."

Okay.

There are many things

we can do,

but we are not allowed

to do them.

And then after that,

there's still a final level

that we look at and that's,

what should we do?

Because there are many things

that would be

technically possible

and technically legal

but a bad idea.

For natanz,

it was a CIA-led operation,

so we had to have

agency sign-off.

Gibney:
Really?

Someone from the agency

stood behind the operator

and the analyst

and gave the order to launch

every attack.

Chien:
Before they had

even started this attack,

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