- The real story this week concerns the collapse of the
BlackBerry system on a national level. This was the direct result of Israeli-owned
US firms' technological probings into American top-secret communications
network. As direct result of these break-ins via inside plantings of trap-doored
systems, the famous BlackBerry systems crashed for almost 10 hours. One
of the targets was the system better known as CryptoBerry. The term CryptoBerry
was a project name for the S/MIME BlackBerry product. (S/MIME: Secure/Multi-purpose
Internet Mail Extension) Conventional BlackBerry uses TripleDES to encrypt
all traffic between the device and the BES.
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- It was originally produced by RSA Data Security, and
developed for NSA (National Security Agency, ed) and, as developed was
a more secure version of the BlackBerry e-mail client from Research in
Motion Ltd. of Waterloo, Ontario, used by DoD officials and in the field
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Initially very slow, NSA then improved its performance.
The security implications of 'going through Canada' are virtually nil.
All messages, be they conventional or S/MIME always pass through the RIM
BlackBerry infrastructure in encrypted form, and RIM does not have access
to the keys.
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- The S/MIME BlackBerry is meant for organizations already
using S/MIME to completely secure their mail from sender to recipient,
including from the eyes of their own network administrators
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- The expressed concerns of the DoD, which uses these systems,
and the NSA who are involved heavily with their versions of it, are greatly
concerned about a possible terrorist attack on the American secret communications
network. If such an attack were coupled with an internet takedown, S/MIME
would be completely useless and if a successful attack were launched on
the RIM relay, everything would be shut down..
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- A joint report, highly classified, under date of March
30, 2007, by the FBI, the DoD and the NSA discuss in detail an extensive
Israeli trechinical espionage operation working inside the United States
to mine any and all information that might "be of ongoing importance
to the state of Israel."
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- It would be impossible to specifically quote from any
of the documents or show copies of them but a digest of the information
is appended at the end of this report.
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- What two hundred and ten pages tells the reader is that
the Israeli government, through its Mossad or foreign intelligence, has
been systematically spying on the one country that had unquestioningly
supported it and by doing so, has drawn the wrath of many Muslim oriented
terrorists upon its head. The conclusion of the report is that nothing
can be done about this because the current Bush administration is so pro-Israel
that any attempt to interdict its spying on American military, intelligence,
financial institutions and any American they deem to be anti-Israeli is
doomed from the start. Such actions would have to come from public pressure
and not the outrage of American intelligence organs.
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- American terrorist investigators know that members of
the Israeli Mossad, who were involved with the Muslim group that carried
out the (9/11 terrorist attacks had managed to stay ahead of them, by
knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone. This is
accomplished by obtaining and analyzing data that is generated every time
someone in the U.S. makes a telephone call.
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- Here is how the system works. Most directory assistance
calls, and virtually all call records and billing inside the U.S. are done
for the telephone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private telecommunications
company.
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- Amdocs had contracts with the 25 biggest telephone companies
in America, and even more worldwide. The White House and other secure government
phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible for any American
to make a call on any American phone without generating an Amdocs record
of it.
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- In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies
have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly
denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. In 1999, the super secret National
Security Agency, headquartered in Ft. George Meade in northern Maryland,
issued what is called a Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information
report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were
getting into foreign hands in Israel, in particular.
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- Investigators do not believe such calls are being listened
to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is extremely valuable
in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests
just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. "Widespread
data mining techniques and algorithms...combining both the properties of
the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific 'behavior.'"
Specific behavior, such as who the targeted customers are calling.
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- The Amdocs memo says the system should be public ally
advertised as "helping to prevent telephone fraud." However, U.S.
counterintelligence analysts say it could, and unquestionably was, also
be used to spy via the records of the American telephone system. The N.S.A
has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A.
how Amdocs records could be used.
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- At one classified NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argonne
National Laboratory was used to show that if phone records are not completely
secure, major security breaches are more than possible.
-
- Another NSA briefing document said, "It has become
increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerableSuch crimes
always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization...citing
on exploitable vulnerabilities."
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- Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according
to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like
Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. "Many factors have led
to increased dependence on code developed overseas.... We buy rather than
train or develop solutions."
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- U.S. intelligence does not officially believe the Israeli
government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that
its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however,
is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly
organized crime. And that would not be the first time that such a thing
has happened.
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- Amdocs is headquartered in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis,_Missouri>St.
Louis, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri>Missouri but primarily
based in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra'anana>Ra'anana, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel>Israel,
is a provider of software and services for <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billing>billing
and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management>CRM
systems. Its clients are primarily focused on the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sector>public
sector and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications>telecommunications,
including such "Tier-1" players as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint-Nextel>Sprint-Nextel,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cingular>Cingular, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodafone>Vodafone,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile>T-Mobile. The company was
originally called "Aurec Group" (the Hebrew word for Artery ("????"),
which in Hebrew is used to describe a communication channel) and dealt
only with directory services, i.e. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages>Yellow
Pages. They now provide application suites for CRM, sales, and billing
operations for telecommunication service providers. Amdocs still provides
publishing software for creating print and online directories. The company
also offers outsourced <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_service>customer
service and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center>data center
operations.
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- Comverse Infosys. Comverse Infosys is one of the companies
involved with Amdocs in its U.S. espionage activates through the telecommunication
products its sells and systems it operates and services. Its products are
widely used by the US telecommunications industry and government agencies.
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- Telrad Communications. Telerad Networks is one of Israel's
leading developers of carrier grade telecommunications equipment. The
company serves as an original design manufacturer for leading global communications
equipment providers and recently initiated the development of certain classified
products in the metro optical networking . It is headquartered in Rosh
Ha'ayin, Israel.
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- Verint. This company was called Comverse-Infosys until
2002, but was quickly renamed when the FBI started several investigations
against it and arrested some of its employees in the US on suspicion of
espionage.
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- NICE Systems. Headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel,
NICE is a worldwide leader of multimedia digital recording solutions, applications
and related professional services for business interaction management.
NICE products and solutions are used in contact centres, trading floors,
air traffic control (ATC) sites, CCTV security installations and Government
markets. NICE's synergistic technology platform enables customers to capture,
evaluate and analyse business interactions in order to improve business
processes and gain competitive advantage. NICE's subsidiaries and local
offices are based in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom
and France. The company operates in more than 70 countries through a network
of partners and distributors
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