Apple denies opening NSA backdoor to iPhone

Dec 31, 2013

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-denies-opening-nsa-backdoor-to-iphone-31310486/

Chris Davies

Apple has denied collaborating with the NSA to add a snooping backdoor to the iPhone, insisting that despite allegations that the DROPOUTJEEP program could access large swathes of iPhone content without the user realizing, it is unaware of any such exploit. New leaks from NSA documents acquired by whistleblower Edward Snowden led to claims earlier this week that the NSA had a tool that could access data like text messages, location, and more with "100-percent success," something Apple strongly denies either facilitating or, indeed, knowing was in operation.

In fact, in a statement given to TechCrunch and AllThingsD, Apple effectively describes the NSA as "malicious hackers" and says it will work to "defend" users from any attempts to insidiously access iOS content. The Cupertino company is investigating the allegations, it says.

"Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. We care deeply about our customers' privacy and security. Our team is continuously working to make our products even more secure, and we make it easy for customers to keep their software up to date with the latest advancements. Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple's industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who's behind them" Apple

The original documents did not confirm Apple collaboration, but the suggestion of consistent access was seen by some as indicating some degree of assistance in the underlying architecture of iOS.
Meanwhile there are also lingering questions as to just how recently the NSA supposedly had iPhone access. The leaked paperwork is dated 2008, and there's obviously no mention of any iOS version beyond 5; the NSA's DROPOUTJEEP system also apparently required physical access to the iPhone itself for installation.
A remote-installation system was a work-in-progress, according to the leak, but was not functional as of 2008.

Nonetheless, the extent to which the NSA could compromise "infected" iPhones was surprising. As well as accessing text messages, contacts lists, and GPS/cell-tower location, the DROPOUTJEEP tool could access voicemails, turn on the microphone to monitor audio in the surrounding area, and take photos using the smartphone's camera.
It's not the first time Apple has reacted to compromised iPhone claims. Earlier this year, the company strongly denied any PRISM backdoor or iMessage monitoring, pointing out that its IM service was end-to-end encrypted. Security researchers highlighted the potential for cracking that encryption later in the year, but Apple said it had not created the tool to do such tracking.

Story Timeline

• Obama hears panel: Stop NSA bulk phone data collection
• US Director of National Intelligence acknowledges NSA mass surveillance
• NSA phone surveillance ruled legal by NY judge [UPDATE]
• NSA seizes full control of targeted iPhones via DROPOUTJEEP malware

The Effects of Genetically Modified Foods on Animal Health

By Rady Ananda

Global Research, December 31, 2013

Global Research 3 January 2010

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO, Science and Medicine

In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.
All three varieties of GM corn, Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603, were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by European authorities in 2005, Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world.
The Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen studied Monsanto’s 90-day feeding trials data of insecticide producing Mon 810, Mon 863 and Roundup® herbicide absorbing NK 603 varieties of GM maize.
The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.
Although different levels of adverse impact on vital organs were noticed between the three GMOs, the 2009 research shows specific effects associated with consumption of each GMO, differentiated by sex and dose.
Their December 2009 study appears in the International Journal of Biological Sciences(IJBS). This latest study conforms with a 2007 analysis by CRIIGEN on Mon 863, published inEnvironmental Contamination and Toxicology, using the same data.
Monsanto rejected the 2007 conclusions, stating:

“The analyses conducted by these authors are not consistent with what has been traditionally accepted for use by regulatory toxicologists for analysis of rat toxicology data.”
[Also see Doull J, Gaylor D, Greim HA, et al. “Report of an expert panel on the reanalysis by Séralini et al. (2007) of a 90-day study conducted by Monsanto in support of the safety of a genetically modified corn variety (MON 863).” Food Chem Toxicol. 2007; 45:2073-2085.]

Séralini explained that their study goes beyond Monsanto’s analysis by exploring the sex-differentiated health effects on mammals, which Doull, et al. ignored:

“Our study contradicts Monsanto conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose. This is a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health. This is the major conclusion revealed by our work, the only careful reanalysis of Monsanto crude statistical data.” [communication to author]

Other problems with Monsanto’s conclusions
When testing for drug or pesticide safety, the standard protocol is to use three mammalian species. The subject studies only used rats, yet won GMO approval in more than a dozen nations.
Chronic problems are rarely discovered in 90 days; most often such tests run for up to two years. Tests “lasting longer than three months give more chances to reveal metabolic, nervous, immune, hormonal or cancer diseases,” wrote Seralini, et al. in their Doull rebuttal. [See “How Subchronic and Chronic Health Effects can be Neglected for GMOs, Pesticides or Chemicals.” IJBS; 2009; 5(5):438-443.]
Further, Monsanto’s analysis compared unrelated feeding groups, muddying the results. The June 2009 rebuttal explains, “In order to isolate the effect of the GM transformation process from other variables, it is only valid to compare the GMO … with its isogenic non-GM equivalent.”
The researchers conclude that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them.
They have called for “an immediate ban on the import and cultivation of these GMOs and strongly recommend additional long-term (up to two years) and multi-generational animal feeding studies on at least three species to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods.”
Human health, of course, is of primary import to us, but ecological effects are also in play. Ninety-nine percent of GMO crops either tolerate or produce insecticide. This may be the reason we seebee colony collapse disorder and massive butterfly deaths.  If GMOs are wiping out Earth’s pollinators, they are far more disastrous than the threat they pose to humans and other mammals.
Rady Ananda began blogging in 2004. Her work has appeared in several online and print publications, including three books on election fraud. Most of her career was spent working for lawyers in research, investigations and as a paralegal. She spent seven years as an editor, two of them as a web editor for a site with 20,000 members. In December 2003, she graduated from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture with a B.S. in Natural Resources

UFC's Anderson Silva horrifying shin break in Weidman fight most likely due to chronic vitamin D deficiency via dark skin

naturalnews.com

Originally published December 29 2013

UFC's Anderson Silva horrifying shin break in Weidman fight most likely due to chronic vitamin D deficiency via dark skin

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) has grown to become today's most popular sport among America's youth. The sport features amazing athletes battling it out in an octagon, where competitors must combine high-level grappling skills, striking skills, fitness and a strong ground game to achieve victory. Anderson Silva (aka "the Spider") has been one of the most dominant fighters of all time, but his leg shattered in last night's fight as he struck Chris Weidman's knee with his shin. No one seems to understand why this happened, but as a nutrition scientist, I am confident of the underlying cause: Chronic vitamin D deficiency leading to fragile bones.

I am a fan of Silva and his personal philosophies, courage and dedication, so this is not a criticism of Silva. This is an explanation that all UFC athletes need to hear:

Anderson Silva is a Brazilian fighter with a tall, lean frame. Like many UFC fighters, he has dark skin pigmentation, but almost no one in the UFC realizes that dark skin pigmentation interferes with vitamin D creation in response to UV rays from sunlight. Dark skin is, essentially, a built-in "sunscreen" biological mechanism that blocks UV radiation, and that's precisely why dark-skinned people originate from geographical areas closest to the equator (because sunlight is far more intense there).

As a result of this, nearly all dark-skinned people are chronically vitamin D deficient, especially if they spend a lot of time indoors (in gyms, working in offices, etc.). Taking vitamin D supplements can reverse this situation, but many people don't realize they're deficient and fail to take sufficient quantities supplements. Many vitamin D supplements also provide far too little vitamin D to support bone density.

Chronic vitamin D deficiency causes bones to become fragile. What happens is that a lack of vitamin D greatly reduces the body's absorption and uptake of dietary calcium, strontium and other trace elements which build bone material. This is why nearly everyone with low vitamin D also has low bone density.

I have seen this very frequently among dark-skinned athletes who train and compete in mostly indoor settings. They tend to break their bones far more frequently than fair-skinned athletes who unknowingly are getting more UV radiation and therefore more vitamin D creation when they are exposed to sunlight. (For the record, your skin actually generates vitamin D in response to sunlight exposure. It's one of the few vitamins your body actually generates.)

But weak bones can also give UFC fighters a power-to-weight advantage

There's a strange upside to vitamin D deficiency in UFC fighting, however: fragile bones are also light bones, meaning the skeletal system is much lighter than it would be if the person had higher bone density.

A person with chronic vitamin D deficiency and fragile bones might be described as having "bird bones." All birds have bones which are, by design, extremely lightweight and also fragile. This aids birds in achieving and sustaining flight with maximum caloric efficiency. At the same time, however, birds are very easy to crush because their bones have very little stress resistance (compared to the bones of land animals).

So a UFC fighter who has very weak bones also has lightweight bones, and this means they can pack on more muscle in proportion to their skeletal system while still meeting the required weight limit for the fight. I strongly suspect that Anderson Silva has been fighting this way for years: heavy on the muscle but light on the bones. It allowed him a higher power-to-weight ration which, combined with his unusually long legs, gave him enormous tactical advantages in the ring. He could out-reach most opponents and also out-strike them. His extraordinary coordination and athleticism further compounded the effectiveness of all this, and that's a big part of why he went undefeated for so long.

But this power-to-weight advantage is also a weakness. Fragile bones are, essentially, a "chink in the armor." One kick shattered Silva's lower leg and literally separated the bones of his lower leg from the bones extending from his knee. If you look closely in the feature photo of this story, you can see that Silva's lower shin bones are no longer attached to his upper shin bones. Only the skin is keeping it attached. The bones have completely separated.

This demonstrates the striking disadvantage of fighting with low bone mass density caused by chronic vitamin D deficiency. One wrong kick and your career can be finished. Anderson Silva will probably never fight professionally again (which is sad to see because he's such an outstanding athlete).

In summary: What every UFC fighter needs to know about vitamin D

Dark skin pigmentation = low vitamin D creation = low bone density = light skeletal system but fragile weakness of the bones.

Lighter skin or high vitamin D supplementation = high bone density = heavy skeletal system with high resistance to fracturing.

Most UFC fighters are fighting with chronic vitamin D deficiency, and this is especially true among those with dark skin whose biology naturally blocks UV light. It's easy to get your bone density checked, by the way, at a doctor's office who deals with osteoporosis. There's a simple device that uses ultrasound to determine the bone density of your feet and ankles. This tells you whether your bones have a healthy density.

Watch my video below for a more detailed explanation about sunlight, vitamin D, skin cancer, dark skin pigmentation and more:

The Truth About Sunlight, Cancer and Vitamin D

---

All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml

Egypt Attorney General Says Muslim Brotherhood Leaders On Secret Salary From Obama

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Cathleen

Pat Dollard
Excerpted from Walid Shoebat – Egypt’s Attorney General Hisham Barakat is looking into evidence that arrested Muslim Brotherhood leaders accepted bribes from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, according to a report from Almesryoon, an Egyptian newspaper that cites a “judicial source”.
The trials that are scheduled to begin in Cairo on August 25th will feature a litany of charges against the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Included among them are murders, assassinations, prison escapes, sniping, indiscriminate killing of demonstrators, and collaborating with foreign governments, to include both the United States and Qatar.  
Evidence we have obtained lends credibility to the charges of “gifts” (bribes) being taken in U.S. dollars from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” that were distributed to top ministerial level officials in the Mursi government.
Via Almesryoon: - “A judicial source stated that over the past few days, a number of complaints have been filed with the Attorney General Hisham Barakat. These complaints accuse the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders of the centrist party of receiving gifts from the American embassy in Cairo. The sponsors of these complaints stated that among these leaders are Mohamed Badie, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat Al-Shater, deputy leader and businessman, Mohamed Beltagy leading the group, Essam el-Erian, deputy head of the Freedom and Justice Party of, and Abu Ela Mady, head of the Wasat Party, Essam Sultan, deputy head of the Wasat Party.”
The strength of these allegations is seemingly bolstered by another case alluded to by the newspaper in which a document is referenced. This document reportedly reveals monthly “gifts” being paid to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt by the Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Mursi government. These monthly payments were said to be denominated in U.S. dollars to each leader.
Evidence for such allegations are substantiated by a document we have obtained. It includes the names of several recipients of funds and even includes their signatures acknowledging receipt of the funds.
This ledger, obtained from inside the Mursi government, lends additional credibility to the report published – in Arabic – by Almesryoon, which claims that U.S. bribes were paid to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Figure 1: Official Document from Morsi Government, Egypt
“Direction of Grants and Gifts for 2013,” submitted by HE Sheikh/ Hamad bin Jasim bin Jabor Al Thani (May God protect him), Prime Minister – Minister of Foreign Affairs

The names listed on the Qatar document match several names mentioned in the Almesryoon article, including Mohamed Beltagy, listed as the last name in the Qatari document as being paid an annual “gift”/bribe of $850,000 annually in U.S. dollars.
The document above lists “gifts” which amount to bribes being paid to the Mursi government members in annual payments of between $750,000 and $850,000 in U.S. dollars each. The sums amount to tens of millions of dollars in bribes. The nature or purpose for these payments is unknown but is definitely marked as “gifts”.
Here is a direct translation from the newspaper:
“A judicial source stated that the Attorney General Hisham Barakat received a number of filed complaints over the past few days. These complaints accuse leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders of the centrist party of receiving bribes thinly disguised as ‘gifts’, paid through the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.”
Almesryoon reports that both the U.S. and Qatar paid bribes to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leaders. The document above serves as very strong evidence that Qatar did in fact do just that.
The signatures seen in Figure 1 means the document will be used as evidence in the upcoming trials set to begin on the 25th.
http://patdollard.com/2013/08/egypt-attorney-general-says-muslim-brotherhood-leaders-received-850k-from-u-s-embassy/

FBI allowed even more crimes in 2012 than in previous year

Published time: December 27, 2013 

Get short URL

AFP Photo / Emmanuel Dunand

Crime, FBI, Law, Security, USA

The FBI allowed its informants to break the law in 2012 on even more occasions than it did the previous year, according to a new report.
In a letter sent to the US Justice Department, FBI officials revealed that their nationwide offices permitted at least 5,939 instances of law violations during 2012. The letter was obtained by the Huffington Post via a Freedom of Information Act request, and the numbers represent a five percent increase from 2011’s officially sanctioned crimes.
In August, a separate FBI report obtained by USA Today showed that informants were allowed to break the law at least 5,658 times in 2011, ranging from violations such as acts of violence and selling drugs to bribing government officials.
The new report did not categorize the types of crimes that were authorized, nor did it detail how many crimes were permitted by each field office.
Although the FBI does not consider these actions ideal, officials have said before that it is simply part of the process by which they investigate criminal organizations.
"It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context," former top FBI official Shawn Henry told USA Today in August. "This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done randomly. It's not taken lightly."
When RT reported on the FBI-sanctioned crimes in 2011, we found that the FBI document indicated that the violations were Tier I and Tier II infractions.
According to the Justice Department, a Tier I violation is “any activity that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony under federal, state, or local law if engaged in by a person acting without authorization and that involves the commission or the significant risk of the commission of certain offenses, including acts of violence; corrupt conduct by senior federal, state, or local public officials; or the manufacture, importing, exporting, possession, or trafficking in controlled substances of certain quantities.”
Meanwhile, a Tier II crime covers the same range of crimes but is carried out only with the permission of a senior FBI field manager - not that of a federal prosecutor.
Ever since it was revealed that Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was allowed to continue running his crime ring in exchange for other information, the FBI has been required to document the criminal activity it authorizes. But while the FBI has done this for over a decade, other law enforcement agencies – the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives – still do not.

Russian navy boosted with new nuclear attack submarine

Published time: December 31, 2013 19:55

Get short URL

K-329 Severodvinsk, 4th-generation Project 885 Yasen/Graney class nuclear sub (RIA Novosti)

Navy, Nuclear, Russia, SciTech

Russia’s has received a New Year present with the hand-over of a cutting-edge nuclear attack submarine, the Severodvinsk, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.
The Severodvinsk had been under construction at the Sevmash shipyard in northern Russia since 1993.

“Yesterday the parent nuclear submarine of the Yasen-project has been handed over to the navy for trial operation,” Rogozin wrote on Twitter, confirming an earlier report by RIA-Novosti news agency.

The Severodvinsk is one of eight Yasen-class (Graney-class, according to NATO classification) attack subs ordered by the Russian navy.

The second and third boats of the series, the Kazan and the Novosibirsk, are currently under construction and will feature an updated design.

The Severodvinsk has a submerged displacement of 13,800 tons, length of 119 meters, speed of 31 knots, and can dive to 600 meters.

The boat is able to host of 90 submariners, including 32 officers.

Its main armament consists of 24 Oniks (SS-N-26) and Kalibr (SS-N-27) cruise missiles, self-guided torpedoes and mines.

On Monday, the Northern Fleet also said that the Smolensk, a Project 949A (Oscar II-class) nuclear-powered attack submarine, had rejoined the fleet after two years of repairs and upgrading at the Zvyozdochka shipyard in northern Russia.

Built in 1990, the Smolensk has a length of 155 meters, displacement of up to 24,000 tons, operating depth of 600 meters, and maximum submerged speed of 32 knots.

The boat is armed with 24 P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 Shipwreck) supersonic cruise missiles with a range of 550 kilometers (300 nautical miles).

Another Oscar II-class attack submarine, the Voronezh, returned to the Northern Fleet this November 2011 after undergoing similar upgrades.

College Records Reveal Bizarre New Details About Sandy Hook Shooter Adam Lanza (Plus: An Odd New Photo)

Apr. 2, 2013 2:25pm Liz Klimas

• CT School Shooting,
• School Shootings,
• Video

Last night, CBS revealed documents it obtained divulging new information regarding the man who killed 26 people in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

In addition to a photo of Adam Lanza from a school I.D. that had not been publicly released since the shooting in Newtown, CBS showed records from Western Connecticut State University where Lanza attended while still a teenager.

Adam Lanza as pictured on his college I.D. (Image: CBS screenshot)

The form, meant to gain information regarding the student’s background, asked Lanza, who killed himself after shooting others on Dec. 14, to identify his gender and describe himself. To both of these questions, he answered with “I choose not to answer.”

(Image: CBS screenshot)

Documents from the college, which Lanza left after less than a year, were obtained by CBS under the state open records act. They also showed he had a 3.26 GPA while he attended.

Watch CBS’ report:http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90119&sitesection=theblaze&VID=24689258

Last week, even more details into Lanza’s life were released by authorities, including items found in his family’s home after the shooting like a news clipping about a 2008 school shooting, a birthday check from his mother for the purchase of a firearm, and books about autism, Asperger’s syndrome and one titled “Train Your Brain to Get Happy.”

• 100 Days After Newtown, Obama Says ‘Shame on Us if We’ve Forgotten’
• This Is TheBlaze’s Point-by-Point Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory Debunk
• Chilling New Details Emerge on Newtown Shooter After Authorities Release Documents

What Happened to Ol' Dirty Bastard? - The Vigilant Citizen

What Happened to Ol' Dirty Bastard? - The Vigilant Citizen

MORTGEIST

• Posted on December 26, 2013
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

MORTGEIST

Sometimes during the holidays, the bible is picked up and read on occasion because it is always nice to recount the story of Christ and his birth. I remember one year I received leather bound bible for Christmas and I was excitedly turning the pages reading many of the stories in the New and Old Testament.
While I often sound overtly religious at Christmas time, I have to admit that while I find the bible appropriate for personal study, you can’t help but publicly talk about some of the stories that if they happened today would wind up on the Discovery channel.
We have already seen many documentaries about ancient aliens that have been linked to biblical passages and the story of Mary being impregnated by an angel would be just as peculiar as someone appearing on a television special about alien abductions claiming to have been impregnated by an alien.
Another peculiar story worth mentioning is probably the first account of the “Men in Black” or the hooded angels of death.
In Chapter 19 of Genesis, Lot met two men at the gates of Sodom. The men were frightening as Lot fell to them unable to look at their pallid faces. The men warned Lot that they were there to destroy the city and that he is to gather together friends and family and flee into the mountains.
Obviously these pale faced beings knew the secrets of bringing about the destruction of two cities. Lot looked towards the wasted cities and said that it was if a hot furnace had baked the landscape. Lot’s wife wasn’t so lucky she had turned into ash as the city went up into a fiery cloud.
The only weapon we know of today that could annihilate two cities is a Nuclear weapon. Could it be that the two hooded figures knew the secrets of nuclear fission? Did they know the secrets of the creation and destruction of Primordial matter? Did they know that in order to create, they must destroy?
These are just a few basic keys to understanding the mythologies that seem to be cyclical in our existence on this planet. You see them multiply and repeat throughout ancient texts, mythologies, occultist spells, revelations, and in modern Science Fiction.
The hooded visage of the death mythos often straddles the post of science, occultism, revelation, and fantasy. It pushes our limits of understanding and the advent of an appearance of the shadow archetype or the contemporary shadow people has been reported for many centuries. However, I became aware that the sightings of hooded figures have increased in 2013, and historically these so called hooded death figures have appeared around the winter solstice and the New Year.
In the traditional Dickens story of “A Christmas Carol” the ghost of Christmas Present appears and just prior to the arrival of the ghost of Christmas yet to come, he lifts his heavy cloak and reveals two emaciated children with hollowed out black eyes. He calls the boy ignorance and the girl want.
On the forehead of the boy was a mark. The mark meant doom. When Dickens wrote his tale of an old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge, it was estimated that nearly half of all funerals in London were for children under the age of ten.
They would be interred in pauper’s cemeteries. In those times there was a story about the graveyard watchers or the L’ankou. The L’ankou was draped and hooded to hide his pale and wiry frame.
The legend comes from the old Celtic legends of Brittany or the lesser “Britain.”
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries legends would persist that the hooded figure would sometimes appear at Christmas Eve mass and if you were touched by his cloak you would die within the year. There were many historians that would write in their journals that the ankou would appear after the appearances of comets and fireballs.
If anyone was to see a hooded figure in their town, their town would be cursed with plague and dysentery. Dickens used this figure to represent the future, because death was inevitable in times of greed and ignorance.
I suppose that I can write off as sheer coincidence that I received two e-mails on Christmas Eve where concerned listeners had claimed that they witnessed either one hooded figure, or a gathering of hooded figures on Christmas Eve.
One e-mail I received was from a police officer that told me that he witnessed what appeared to be a gathering of three hooded figures standing in a circle. He said that they weren’t hard to miss because they were dark and standing in the snow. He guessed that they had to be at least 10 feet tall.
The other e-mail that I received was from a listener that said that he saw hooded figures walking behind a person was made to look like Krampus. He believed that it may have been some sort of stunt as it happened at a very popular area for families to see Christmas lights.
Both listeners were concerned and while one of the e-mails seemed to have logical explanation the other encounter that was described by the police officer seemed eerily supernatural.
During the Holiday weekend I started to catch up on some of the films I missed. One of the films I watched was the film “The Conjuring” which is a film about the infamous Harrisville Rhode island Haunting of the Perron Family. Even though the film takes liberties with the entities that allegedly appeared the house where they lived, I remember from Andrea Perron’s accounts in her book House of “Darkness House of Light: The True Story,” that one of the entities that appeared was hooded and dark. Perron had claimed that the entity had no facial features only that what was supposed to be a face looked like a cross section of a hornets’ nest or beehive with maggots and worms crawling through it.
Quoting Andrea: “It looked like a lifeless beehive with vermin crawling all over it. Its head was leaning off to one side. It was round and gray, resembling a desiccated hornet’s nest. I couldn’t see anything underneath it… no eyes or mouth…it looked like the cobwebs hanging in the corners of the cellar.”
In 2013 I was also intrigued with an Interview I did with Guy T. Simpson who told us that in his book “The Brotherhood of Olympus” he too encountered what he called the Mortgeist or guardians of purgatory. He also made the claim that these entities were like mercenaries, watching over the dead and policing them throughout eternity.
From 1906 I found a passage from a historical account which eerily describes the hooded phantom that we now call “death” and how it appears as a shadow archetype around the solstice which is why seeing this figure in the winter or in times of distress is no coincidence. It is further that we read that Death picks up a lady in a white dress and carries her across the river. The woman in the white dress is the plague.
“Amongst them all none was more interesting than a certain figure once commonly found all over Brittany, now rarely to be met with, though still remembered and held in reverence in some remote districts.
Sometimes this figure took the form of a tall thin man with long white hair and face shadowed by the broad felt hat of the country, sometimes of a skeleton, draped or undraped, whose skull turned on a pivot as though to signify that in a single glance it beheld the whole district over which it ruled.
Whether man or skeleton, it always held in its hand a scythe, the blade of which was turned forward, and it signified L′Ankou or Death.
Many are the beliefs and superstitions connected with L′Ankou, and though the representations of him have, as I have said, all but disappeared from the land, the people in many parts believe in and fear him as their ancestors did in the past.
They believe, for instance, that the last man who dies in the village during the year becomes L′Ankou for the year ensuing. That he has his chariot or cart in which he makes his royal progress, spreading terror and desolation wherever he goes. That he is usually drawn by two horses, one fat and well-to-do, the other lean as Death himself.
They say that he uses a human bone to sharpen his scythe, and goes about quite silently— him, his horses, and his cart. His great friends and helpers are supposed to be Plague and Dysentery, the former of whom being lame cannot move over flowing water by herself, but has to be carried by someone.—The Celtic Review page 274 1906
If one uses a Tarot deck they will know that the 13th Card in the deck is traditionally death riding in on a pale horse.

On the face of the card the dark figure tramples a monarch whether it will be king or queen with his white horse. On some cards Death carries a scythe or traditionally he has a flag that depicts the mystic rose. The mystical rose has been linked to immortality and in some cases the rose was another term for that of holy blood.
Also the death figure is welcomed by the Pontiff that clings to faith even though he faces his inevitability. The card also shows a young maiden who looks away in great sorrow and pain and a young boy, who may represent the young prince who will reign at the beginning of a new dawn. Some say what awaits is the New Jerusalem as the sun rises between the two towers of Judgment.
If we look at the 13th, card in the Tarot deck as a metaphor for 2013’s transition to 2014, we can conclude that what may happen in sequence would be abrupt change brought on by the sudden deaths of people who wield real power in the world. These power brokers are monarchs, rulers, current and past Presidents, Church leaders, Bishops, Cardinals and Popes. This will shake the faith of many people in 2014. It will pave the way for a Prince to appear as the appropriate leader to bring about the New Jerusalem.
If there was ever a paranormal image of the year that could grace the covers of TIME or Newsweek it would have to be the hooded image of death. It is also ironic that the hooded image of Trayvon Martin became symbolic of injustice and menace in the mainstream media. It can be argued that such an image of a hooded young man that shot dead, was the appropriate representation of L’ankou and triggered a very deep and well known core archetype that has been with us in the unconscious mind form the beginning of time.
Carl Jung had expressed that all humans have inherited a set of primordial images that are buried deep in the collective unconscious. These are called Archetypes and they tend to remain buried within the unconscious mind. Deep down we respond to them and they are programmed into us through religion, art, literature and films. The shadow archetype is the most dangerous one of all. Shadow archetypes have tendency to invade thoughts and when those shadowy thoughts become “group think” there is the possibility that through some quantum trick a manifestation can take place.
The shadow archetype becomes a real breathing entity fortified with the groupthink that prolongs its life and its image can be a harbinger to some other event that will eventually cause hardship.
Dr. Carol S. Pearson who has developed her own archetypical methods has stated that shadow archetypes surface at times when we as a collective are worried about the future.
It seems that shadow archetypes are here to carry out our destruction and if they become autonomous egregores we must pay attention to them and try to eliminate or at least protect ourselves from their influences.
According to Pearson each and every person has a death wish that can ultimately hurt them and the much larger society. Pearson further adds, “Even the healthiest individual will do or say things that hurt other people. Ultimately, the Destroyer turns us into villains when we refuse to acknowledge and take responsibility for the harm we do and we all do harm of some kind.”
I remember in my life a time where I also saw what appeared to be a hooded entity in my room, the appearance of this hooded entity happened in 2005 just prior to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
The entity was a dark figure and in my blurry gaze from my bed to my computer room it seemed to have entered through my open window. It stood in the small doorway, and my heart pounded as I wondered what it wanted with me. It did not move towards me and I was too terrified to move towards it.
It made no sound as it looked at me, with eyes that caught the glow of my computer screen. It just stood there, draped and hooded, and it finally delivered a message to me. It wasn’t audible; I only could hear its voice in my mind. I did not feel threatened as it spoke to me. It spoke in a soft voice, a whisper, like conscience speaks to us and reminds us that we are at peace when we do a good deed.
The entity first spoke in some language I did not understand, and the more it tried to communicate, the more the words were replaced by imagery. Much of what I saw was destruction and chaos. I was seeing people fleeing their neighborhoods. I watched policemen escorting people out of their homes and placing them in military vehicles.
It looked like major disaster and I feared that it was going to happen in Portland Oregon where I lived. I asked the entity what I was witnessing and before it disappeared it spoke to me as a whisper in my mind:
“It is medieval attitudes that bring about medieval pestilence. It is medieval attitudes that bring about medieval crusades. It is medieval crusades that unleash the demonic plague.”
In this time where we are deluged with stress and chaos, it is often difficult to be positive with the hardships and misgivings we all can feel about our future. We may not show it on the surface, but deep down we feel the pain and suffering of those around us. It is because we are all connected in some way. Things in our world are changing rapidly. We are all waking up to the possibility that our lives are hanging in the balance.
As the 13 trump card in the Tarot is called the Death card and the hooded entity rides the pale horse symbolizing the fall of kings, the death of young and old and all things fragile ,we must also realize that the card itself means that great change is about to take place.
The world as we know it is about to go through a drastic transmogrification and even our country will be seeing these changes as governments manufacture crisis in ordr to get a reaction from the people.
Usually that reaction includes demanding that stricter laws be made and in some cases the reaction includes war. Either way the bargain we all make includes the bloodshed that will be demanded in the process.
The year 2013 hinted at war; however we avoided the reality of new wars and new ways of killing each other. In 2014 we may not be as lucky. The agent of death is being seen by many people now, which probably indicates that many of them are in tune with what is transpiring in the spirit of the times.

The NSA is Building the Foundation for a Global Police State NSA spying is just the beginning, a far greater threat lies ahead

                                                                                           

By Eric Sommer

Global Research, December 31, 2013

RT Op-Edge

Region: USA

Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is building the foundation for a global police state. This is not an exaggeration.
The lynch pin of the NSA system is the continuous gathering of all types of digital data on political leaders, economic institutions, and hundreds of millions of people around the world. Despite the recent revelations, the political leaders of the US government have never stated that such activities will stop.
However, the current massive cyber surveillance of the worlds’ people and institutions is only the beginning of the threat from the NSA and its allied US government agencies. Unrestricted information technology (IT) power in the hands of the US government is a future threat which dwarfs anything the NSA has done to date.

AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards
Moore’s law, a prediction originally formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that microchips double in power and halve in price per unit power every two years. In the 47 years since this prediction appeared, it has always been validated, and experts expect this trajectory to continue for the foreseeable future.
By simple arithmetic of the 2x2x2x2x2 variety, we can see that ten years from now, chip power will be 32 times greater than today. The capabilities of a wide range of digital devices will also improve exponentially, as processing speed, memory capacity, sensors, and miniaturization are all linked to Moore’s law.
This upward leap will have massive negative consequences if the US government is permitted to retain its current ‘blank check’ on the use – and manipulation – of IT.
To begin with, the power to gather – and to automate – the scanning and manipulation of…the worlds data will grow exponentially. The NSA has already anticipated this development by constructing a gigantic new center in the US state of Utah. Finished at the end of 2013, it will house unimaginable amounts of data – amounts far greater than any it has so far gathered, at an estimated cost for construction plus hardware and software of 3.5 to 4 billion US dollars.
Second, the power of the NSA – and of other US government entities – to instantlycontrol or kill anyone or any institution anywhere in the world will also grow exponentially. IT-controlled pilot-less drone airplanes, currently used by the US government to murder people thousands of miles away in a number of countries, are but a small harbinger of what will be possible.

AFP Photo / Mario Tama

One important development is what IT people call ‘the internet of things,’ something which is already under construction. The idea is to incorporate into the world network a large proportion of the inanimate objects which surround us. Grocery store products, appliances, vehicles, buildings, highways, factory systems, and machines, and more are all being added – or will be added – in various ways to the network. Many of these things, of course, already contain computer chips, and some are already networked.
Building backdoors and hacking – methods beloved by the NSA – into the chips, software, and network connections of this ‘world of things’ would turn everyday objects into potential drones.
Imagine, for example, a foreign government official is disliked by the US government – or just by the NSA. Or perhaps someone in the US posts something on the internet that the government really dislikes. Suddenly, that person is attacked by their toaster. Or they mysteriously lose control of their car. Or the airplane they’re flying in crashes. Or the friendly house-cleaning robot they recently bought suddenly turns mean.
On a larger scale, the same kinds of methods can be used to disrupt or put out of action a foreign country’s military systems, government systems, or economic enterprises.
What’s more, there is every possibility that the NSA or similar agencies will attempt to infiltrate their spying, and potential for disruption, into the emerging realm of augmented reality technologies. Augmented reality involves looking at a real-world environment through an IT-enhanced pair of glasses – glasses which simultaneously display the real world and some digital content such as images, pictures, text, video, or whatever. Moreover, these glasses are connected wirelessly to the internet, so the augmented realities can be shared.
To cite a very simple example, you might be looking at a real world table, but seeing flowers on the table that aren’t there. And you might be seeing and talking to people at the table who are actually in another place.
This isn’t science fiction; it’s on the way in various forms to widespread commercial availability in the next year or so from multiple IT companies – including Google, and several dozens more. Some experts believe that functions now done on computers, mobile phones, and other IT systems currently in use will ultimately ‘collapse’ into, or be absorbed into, this new technology.

AFP Photo / Hoang Dinh Nam

As wonderful as it may prove to be, augmented reality technology is also not without dangers. Bear in mind the recent revelation that the NSA has already infiltrated false ‘avatars’ and engaged in other covert activity in World of Warcraft and Second Life, two of the most popular multi-player computer game systems, in which users immerse into a ‘virtual world.’ Such games are are used by millions of people around the world.
Information technology – powered by Moore’s law – is, in fact, moving progressively closer to the human brain. From the post-WWII mainframe computers, to desktop computers, to notebooks and tablets, to smartphones, to augmented reality glasses.
What’s next? The logical step beyond the glasses is apt to be something like augmented reality operating through contact lenses, followed after that by augmented reality operating through actual visual and auditory implants behind the eyes and ears, thereby creating real world ‘augmented humans.’ Such technology might greatly increase the capabilities and even intelligence of users. But it also has a dystopian potential for unprecedented state spying and interference.
Under ever-worsening life conditions for the American people, there is a real danger that IT-enabled ‘security’ – whether called the ‘NSA’ or something else – will increasingly be used for more illegal and unconstitutional surveillance and control of the population. Only a determined effort now to rein in the NSA – and the massive use of IT for so-called ‘security’ purposes – can help prevent this potential tragedy.

Is The NSA Quartering “Digital” Troops Within Our Homes?

Are “Digital” Troops Being Sent Into Our Digital Devices Like British Troops Were Sent Into American Colonists’ Homes?

By Washington's Blog

Global Research, January 01, 2014

Washington's Blog

Region: USA

Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

We have extensively documented that the U.S. government is trampling virtually every single Constitutional right set forth in the Bill of Rights.
One of the few rights which we thought the government still respects is the the 3rd Amendment, which prohibits the government forcing people to house troops:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

But security expert Jacob Appelbaum notes that the NSA may be digitally violating the 3rd Amendment.
By way of background, this week Appelbaum was the main force behind an expose in Spiegel – and gave a must-watch talk – on the NSA’s systemic offensive programs to commandeer computers and computer systems, phone connections and phone systems, and communications networks of all types.
Appelbaum shows that the NSA has literally taken over our computer and our phones, physically intercepting laptop shipments and installing bugware before themselves shipping the laptop on to the consumer, installing special hardware that overcomes all privacy attempts, including “air gaps” (i.e. keep a computer unplugged from the Internet). Appelbaum also notes that spyware can suck up a lot of system resources on a computer or smartphone.
And he says this is the digital equivalent of soldiers being stationed in our houses against our will:
The parallel might not be as far-fetched as it may seem at first …
The NSA itself says that it’s in the middle of a massive cyber war. As such, malware, physical spying devices and offensive internet workarounds are literally the main troops in the NSA’s offensive cyber army.
Quartering meant that Colonial Americans had:

• No control over when the British troops came and went

• No say in what resources they consumed

• And no privacy even in their own castles

Similarly, mass NSA spying means that modern day Americans have:

• No control over when military presence comes or goes from our computer and phones (NSA is part of the Department of Defense)

• No say in what resources the spies suck up (remember, Applebaum says that spying can use a lot of resources and harm performance)

• And no privacy even in the deepest inner sanctuary of our electronic home base

Colonial Americans lost the quiet use and enjoyment of their homes. Modern Americans are losing the quiet use and enjoyment of our digital homes because the NSA is stationing digital “troops” inside our computers and phones.
Just as the Colonists’ homes were no longer theirs … our computers and phones are no longer ours.

How Will The Economy Improve In 2014 If Almost Everyone Has Less Money To Spend?

By Michael Snyder, on December 31st, 2013

 

Is the U.S. consumer tapped out?  If so, how in the world will the U.S. economy possibly improve in 2014?  Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is heavily dependent on consumer spending.  If average Americans are not out there spending money, the economy tends not to do very well.  Unfortunately, retail sales during the holiday season appear to be quite disappointing and the middle class continues to deeply struggle.  And for a whole bunch of reasons things are likely going to be even tougher in 2014.  Families are going to have less money in their pockets to spend thanks to much higher health insurance premiums under Obamacare, a wide variety of tax increases, higher interest rates on debt, and cuts in government welfare programs.  The short-lived bubble of false prosperity that we have been enjoying for the last couple of years is rapidly coming to an end, and 2014 certainly promises to be a very "interesting year".
Obamacare Rate Shock
Most middle class families are just scraping by from month to month these days.
Unfortunately for them, millions of those families are now being hit with massive health insurance rate increases.
In a previous article, I discussed how one study found that health insurance premiums for men are going to go up by an average of 99 percent under Obamacare and health insurance premiums for women are going to go up by an average of 62 percent under Obamacare.
Most middle class families simply cannot afford that.
Earlier today, I got an email from a reader that was paying $478 a month for health insurance for his family but has now received a letter informing him that his rate is going up to $1,150 a month.
Millions of families are receiving letters just like that.  And to say that these rate increases are a "surprise" to most people would be a massive understatement.  Even people that work in the financial industry are shocked at how high these premiums are turning out to be...

"The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family," said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000 for a family of six for a silver plan he was considering. The monthly premium: $1,400.

Since Americans are going to have to pay much more for health insurance, that is going to remove a huge amount of discretionary spending from the economy, and that will not be good news for retailers.
Get Ready For Higher Taxes
When you raise taxes, you reduce the amount of money that people have in their pockets to spend.
Sadly, that is exactly what is happening.
Congress is allowing a whopping 55 tax breaks to expire at the end of this year, and when you add that to the 13 major tax increases that hit American families in 2013, it isn't a pretty picture.
This tax season, millions of families are going to find out that they have much higher tax bills than they had anticipated.
And all of this comes at a time when incomes in America have been steadily declining.  In fact, real median household income has declined by a total of 8 percent since 2008.
If you are a worker, you might want to check out the chart that I have posted below to see where you stack up.  In America today, most workers are low income workers.  These numbers come from a recent Huffington Post article...

-If you make more than $10,000, you earn more than 24.2% of Americans, or 37 million people.
-If you make more than $15,000 (roughly the annual salary of a minimum-wage employee working 40 hours per week), you earn more than 32.2% of Americans.
-If you make more than $30,000, you earn more than 53.2% of Americans.
-If you make more than $50,000, you earn more than 73.4% of Americans.
-If you make more than $100,000, you earn more than 92.6% of Americans.
-You are officially in the top 1% of American wage earners if you earn more than $250,000.
-The 894 people that earn more than $20 million make more than 99.99989% of Americans, and are compensated a cumulative $37,009,979,568 per year.

It is important to keep in mind that those numbers are for the employment income of individuals not households.  Most households have more than one member working, so overall household incomes are significantly higher than these numbers.
Higher Interest Rates Mean Larger Debt Payments
On Tuesday, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries rose to 3.03 percent.  I warned that this would happen once the taper started, and this is just the beginning.  Interest rates are likely to steadily rise throughout 2014.
The reason why the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries is such a critical number is because mortgage rates and thousands of other interest rates throughout our economy are heavily influenced by that number.
So big changes are on the way.  As a recent CNBC article declared, the era of low mortgage rates is officially over...

The days of the 3.5% 30-year fixed are over. Rates are already up well over a full percentage point from a year ago, and as the Federal Reserve begins its much anticipated exit from the bond-buying business, I believe rates will inevitably go higher.

Needless to say, this is going to deeply affect the real estate market.  As Mac Slavo recently noted, numbers are already starting to drop precipitously...

The National Association of Realtors reported that the month of September saw its single largest drop in signed home sales in 40 months. And that wasn’t just a one-off event. This month mortgage applications collapsed a shocking 66%, hitting a 13-year low.

And U.S. consumers can expect interest rates on all kinds of loans to start rising.  That is going to mean higher debt payments, and therefore less money for consumers to spend into the economy.
Government Benefit Cuts
Well, if the middle class is going to have less money to spend, perhaps other Americans can pick up the slack.
Or maybe not.
You certainly can't expect the poor to stimulate the economy.  As I mentioned yesterday, it is being projected that up to 5 million unemployed Americans could lose their unemployment benefits by the end of 2014, and 47 million Americans recently had their food stamp benefits reduced.
So the poor will also have less money to spend in 2014.
The Wealthy Save The Day?
Perhaps the stock market will continue to soar in 2014 and the wealthy will spend so much that it will make up for all the rest of us.
You can believe that if you want, but the truth is that there are a whole host of signs that the days of this irrational stock market bubble are numbered.  The following is an excerpt from one of my recent articles entitled "The Stock Market Has Officially Entered Crazytown Territory"...

The median price-to-earnings ratio on the S&P 500 has reached an all-time record high, and margin debt at the New York Stock Exchange has reached a level that we have never seen before.  In other words, stocks are massively overpriced and people have been borrowing huge amounts of money to buy stocks.  These are behaviors that we also saw just before the last two stock market bubbles burst.

If the stock market bubble does burst, the wealthy will also have less money to spend into the economy in 2014.
For the moment, the stock market has been rallying.  This is typical for the month of December.  You see, the truth is that investors generally don't want to sell stocks in December because they want to put off paying taxes on the profits.
If stocks are sold before the end of the year, the profits go on the 2013 tax return.
If stocks are sold a few days from now, the profits go on the 2014 tax return.
It is only human nature to want to delay pain for as long as possible.
Expect to see some selling in January.  Many investors are very eager to start taking profits, but they wanted to wait until the holidays were over to do so.
So what do you think is coming up in 2014?  Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...

MYSTERY BOOMS HIT TORONTO

Posted by George Freund on December 31, 2013

On Christmas Eve, many people in and around Toronto reported hearing a loud "boom," like something had fallen on their house.

As usual Conspiracy Cafe is right on the money before the cash drawer is opened. We stated right from the start there was something quite out of the ordinary with the massive power disruption around the Toronto area. There were reports of red and green lightning in the sky. On Christmas Eve and last night mainstream media reported that there were large booms heard all over the eastern sector of Toronto out to Belleville. The question has to be raised. Were we in the grip of a scalar weapon deployment? The short answer would be YES!






KEEP YOUR PREPARATION SUPPLIES AT THE READY IN CASE THERE IS MORE TO COME.

Your USB cable, the spy: Inside the NSA’s catalog of surveillance magic

Latest batch of documents from Snowden shows NSA's power to pwn.

by Sean Gallagher - Dec 31 2013, http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/inside-the-nsas-leaked-catalog-of-surveillance-magic/

• Cyberwar
• National Security

A diagram of an NSA BIOS-based attack, brought to you by sneakernet.

NSA leaks

• Snowden speaks from Moscow: “The mission’s already accomplished”
• Feds admit start of NSA surveillance, still say it’s too secretive for court
• US changes its mind, tells FISA Court it’s cool to publish metadata rulings
• Obama says Snowden’s actions have “done unnecessary damage”
• US, UK spies targeted allies, charities, and “Estonian Skype security team”

View all…

The National Security Agency’s sophisticated hacking operations go way beyond using software vulnerabilities to gain access to targeted systems. The agency has a catalog of tools available that would make James Bond’s Q jealous, providing NSA analysts access to just about every potential source of data about a target.
In some cases, the NSA has modified the firmware of computers and network hardware—including systems shipped by Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, and Juniper Networks—to give its operators both eyes and ears inside the offices the agency has targeted. In others, the NSA has crafted custom BIOS exploits that can survive even the reinstallation of operating systems. And in still others, the NSA has built and deployed its own USB cables at target locations—complete with spy hardware and radio transceiver packed inside.
Documents obtained by Der Spiegel reveal a fantastical collection of surveillance tools dating back to 2007 and 2008 that gave the NSA the power to collect all sorts of data over long periods of time without detection. The tools, ranging from back doors installed in computer network firmware and software to passively powered bugs installed within equipment, give the NSA a persistent ability to monitor some targets with little risk of detection. While the systems targeted by some of the “products” listed in the documents are over five years old and are likely to have been replaced in some cases, the methods and technologies used by all the exploit products could easily still be in use in some form in ongoing NSA surveillance operations.

Special delivery

There’s no indication from the documents that the manufacturers played any role in the development or delivery of the backdoors (something that manufacturers are now loudly telling their customers, too). The documents, which appear to be pages from a catalog of capabilities provided by the NSA's ANT division for the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division, show that many of the tools on offer are ordinary Windows exploits designed to use parts of the operating system to “phone home” to the NSA with data; like most malware, these packages can be dropped in place remotely and are probably the least interesting of the new revelations.
Hardware- and firmware-based backdoors, by contrast, require laying hands on the actual target systems. In some cases, the NSA’s operators install backdoor hardware and firmware directly onto the systems by “interdiction”—the systems are diverted during shipping to “load stations” where the surveillance components are installed. (This interception may have been accomplished with the cooperation of shipping companies or other government agencies; details of the process remain murky.) In other cases, the NSA uses an insider with a USB device or remote access tools deployed by other means to gain access to computer systems, allowing the NSA to “reflash” their low-level BIOS firmware.
Either way, the altering of systems’ firmware or hardware gives the NSA the ability to install backdoors that can survive a total operating system wipe and re-installation. One BIOS attack, called SWAP, was developed by the NSA to attack a number of types of computers and operating systems by loading surveillance and control software at boot-up. SWAP uses the Host Protected Area on a computer’s hard drive to store the payload and installs it before the operating system boots.
More specialized BIOS attacks were developed to take advantage of motherboard-based System Management Mode (SMM) capabilities on Dell and Hewlett-Packard servers. Dell PowerEdge servers were targeted with an implant called DEITYBOUNCE, while HP Proliant 360DL G5 servers were targeted with one called IRONCHEF. Both allowed NSA operators to gain remote control of systems in SMM mode—giving the agency firmware-level control over infected servers and the ability to do things like run “rootkits” on the server operating system.

The ANT "product" listing for IRONCHEF, the BIOS attack on HP servers, showing an example attack scenario where remote operators use a covert wireless network to take control of servers.

Network hardware is also a target for the NSA’s BIOS attacks. For example, one collection of BIOS hacks called the “MONTANA” family  (SCHOOLMONTANA, SIERRAMONTANA, and STUCCOMONTANA), was designed to target Juniper Networks routers using the JUNOS operating system—a FreeBSD derivative. Once installed, the hacked BIOS actually modifies the operating system kernel in memory when the router is booted, giving an NSA remote operations center full command and control over the router and allowing for selected network traffic to be sent back to the operations center over an external network connection. Even physically replacing the CompactFlash memory card the router boots from wouldn't get rid of this back door.
Juniper routers weren’t the only targets of these sorts of BIOS “implants,” either—firewalls and routers from Cisco and Huawei were also on the 2007 menu for firmware and software exploits. Such router exploits didn’t even require interception of the hardware but could in many cases be remotely installed by way of another hack.
For systems where a BIOS hack is impractical, the NSA has other tools to install a persistent backdoor. One, called GINSU, uses a PCI bus device installed on the computer. An implant called BULLDOZER creates a stealth wireless bridge, providing radio-based remote control of the backdoor to TAO operators. If the rootkit on the system (called KONGUR) is removed by a system re-installation, the GINSU backdoor can re-install the software on the next boot-up.

Enlarge / GINSU allows the NSA to slice and dice computers' hard drives and control them remotely over a covert radio connection.

Reach out and touch someone

An implanted wireless device is the NSA’s go-to approach for dealing with “air-gapped” networks—networks that don’t have an Internet connection for security reasons. There are a number of other implanted devices that the NSA has in its TAO arsenal, including USB and Ethernet implants that can transmit short-range radio signals and more robust implanted hardware for longer-range transmissions. These radio links create a shadow Internet that allows the NSA to move data out of an adversary’s network and into its TURMOIL and X-KEYSCORE collection system.

The COTTONMOUTH series of implants are USB devices that provide a covert wireless bridge into a target network. They can be integrated into any USB plug, so check your mouse.

For networks that the NSA can't get to physically, there's NIGHTSTAND, a self-contained Wi-Fi hacking system that can break into networks up to eight miles away, in optimum conditions. NIGHTSTAND hijacks the target network and uses packet injection attacks to install exploits on the target network's computers. Combined with a Windows exploit called SOMBERKNAVE, which uses a computer's Wi-Fi adapter to "phone home" with data, it could be used to collect data from target computers even when they're not intentionally connected to a network.

Enlarge / According to the ANT catalog, the NIGHTSTAND Wi-FI exploit system's attack is "undetectable by the user."

But why stop at network data? The NSA also uses some fairly exotic tools to grab computer video, keyboard strokes, and even audio from inside more difficult-to-reach places by using passive electronic devices that are actually powered by radar. These devices, charged by a specially tuned continuous wave radio signal sent from a portable radar unit (operating at as little as 2W up to as much as 1kW of power in the 1-2GHz range), send back a data stream as a reflected signal, allowing the NSA’s operators to tune in and view what’s happening on a computer screen or even listen to what’s being said in the room as they paint the target with radio frequency energy—as well as giving a relative rough location of devices within a building for the purposes of tracking or targeting.

Hacking smartphones

The 2007 NSA wish book for analysts also includes a number of software tools that allow data to be stolen from a variety of smartphones and dumb cell phones. One software hack, called DROPOUTJEEP, is a software implant for Apple iOS devices that allows the NSA to remotely control and monitor nearly all the features of an iPhone, including geolocation, text messages, and the microphone and camera. (Researcher and developer Jake Appelbaum, who helped write the Spiegel article revealing the documents, said separately this week that the NSA claims DROPOUTJEEP installations are always successful.) Another package, called TOTEGHOSTLY, does the same for phones based on the Windows Mobile embedded operating system.
Both the DROPOUTJEEP and TOTEGHOSTLY releases mentioned in the 2007 product listing required “close access methods” for installation—in other words, a human being getting up close and personal with the phone to install it. “A remote installation capacity will be pursued for a future release,” the document states. But another tool, called MONKEYCALENDAR, allowed the NSA to remotely install location-tracking software onto any GSM phone by way of a software implant for SIM cards.
But these aren't the only way the NSA can get to cell phone data. Also in the bag of tricks are a number of wireless monitoring devices, as well as “networks in a box” and other gear that can pose as cell towers and networks—intercepting devices as they enter an area and grabbing up their voice, data, and SMS traffic. A "tripwire" program called CANDYGRAM can send out alerts whenever a cell phone hits a specified cell tower.

Old tricks, new tricks

It’s important to note that the exploits in the documents are largely over five years old, so they don’t necessarily give a complete picture of what the NSA is capable of today. That doesn’t mean that these techniques are no longer in circulation—given the stubbornness of Windows XP, many of the exploits developed for older Windows platforms may have years left in them, and some of the adversaries the NSA is trying to monitor don’t have Fortune 500 hardware refresh rates.
A frequent defense of what the NSA does with its bag of tricks is that in many ways it is no different from what other countries (including China, Russia, and France) try to do to the United States and other countries via their intelligence organizations. These documents show the key way the NSA is different—its vast technical resources and ability to essentially put itself into the supply chain for technology flowing to the rest of the world. US officials have long suspected China of doing the same thing with hardware from companies such as Huawei and ZTE, but these documents essentially spell out that "interdiction" is part of the US intelligence strategy, too.
The exposure of the techniques and capabilities of the NSA creates another problem for the agency, in that it provides those hard-to-get-at organizations the TAO was created to go after with an idea of how the NSA has targeted and will target them. It also creates a problem for companies like Cisco and Juniper, who now face the same sort of scrutiny the US and others put Huawei under for its connections to the Chinese military. Even if Dell, HP, Cisco, and Juniper had no hand in creating the backdoors for their products, the documents will undoubtedly be used against them the next time they try to sell hardware to a foreign government.