Exclusive: Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords - sources

[applegrove]

Exclusive: Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords - sources

By Mark Hosenball and Warren Strobel at Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108?irpc=932

"SNIP..........................



(Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a spy base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.

A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments, said a source close to several U.S. government investigations into the damage caused by the leaks.

Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.

The revelation is the latest to indicate that inadequate security measures at the NSA played a significant role in the worst breach of classified data in the super-secret eavesdropping agency's 61-year history.



...........................SNIP"

[VanillaRhapsody]

1. Uh oh....

[Thinkingabout]

2. Idiots

[randome]

3. He got a lot of mileage out of that sweet, innocent demeanor, didn't he?

Even his fiance was taken in. Although, to be fair, I think he fooled himself, too.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[WorseBeforeBetter]

4. Two dozen-ish employees of the nation's *top* spy agency...

don't know NOT to share their passwords? UFB.

[Bolo Boffin]

7. + 24-ish. n/t

[PoliticAverse]

5. Social engineering wins again... n/t

[JaneyVee]

6. And here's my bank PIN number, and my social security number, do you need

My mothers maiden name and date of birth also? They should be fired along with the person responsible for hiring them.

[gulliver]

8. People don't expect a system administrator to commit security crimes.

Most people think of system administrators as enforcing security, not breaching it. They thought Snowden could be trusted, but he was just "social engineering" them. Who knows what Snowden told them? He might have convinced them that he was trying to make things more secure.

These people should not have trusted Snowden, but I do understand why they would.

[applegrove]

9. I've seen and been fooled by the worst

kind of liar and people doing his bidding. When you think of the world as an inherantly good place you are putty in the hands of manipulators.

[davidpdx]

10. Those people will probably lose their jobs

Yes, it wasn't the brightest thing to do. Clearly they had a snowjob done on them.

Ah, what does it matter though. It wasn't really his fault. They conned him into taking their information.