{"id":68582,"date":"2014-09-16T12:15:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T10:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=68582"},"modified":"2014-09-16T12:15:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T10:15:35","slug":"nsa-infiltrates-sa-data-centre-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/68582\/nsa-infiltrates-sa-data-centre-report\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA infiltrates SA data centre: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa is among the countries which hosts servers for a United States National Security Agency (NSA) project called \u201cPackagedGoods\u201d, according to new documents released from Edward Snowden\u2019s archive.<\/p>\n

Reports published simultaneously on The Intercept<\/a> and Der Spiegel<\/a> detail an NSA project known as Treasure Map, which lets the agency build a near real-time, interactive map of the global Internet.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time Treasure Map has been mentioned as part of the Snowden leaks, as the New York Times reported<\/a> about the project\u2019s existence during November 2013.<\/p>\n

However, these new documents reveal that not only had the NSA infiltrated network operators based in Germany, but it also has data gathering tools for Treasure Map running in a South African data centre.<\/p>\n

\"NSA<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the NSA presentation about Treasure Map<\/a> which The Intercept published, the system focuses on using network and geographic data to identify and locate Internet-connected devices and their users.<\/p>\n

Packaged Goods is a data gathering arm of Treasure Map, gathering and providing data about networks around the world for the system.<\/p>\n

The Intercept quoted the chief engineer of satellite communications company Stellar PCS as saying that intelligence services could use this data to shut down the Internet in entire countries in Africa that use their satellite connections.<\/p>\n

Stellar PCS was among the organisations whose network was listed as being wholly infiltrated by the NSA\u2019s data interception programmes.<\/p>\n

An \u201cunwitting\u201d South African data centre<\/h3>\n
\"NSA<\/a>

NSA Treasure Map Bring the SIGINT<\/p><\/div>\n

\"NSA<\/a>

NSA Treasure Map AS peering-<\/p><\/div>\n

While none of South Africa\u2019s networks are shown as compromised in this recently released Treasure Map presentation, it does say that we are playing host to a Packaged Goods server (PG-Server) in an \u201cunwitting data centre\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is stated under a bullet point tagged as U\/\/FOUO, which stands for unclassified but for official use only, meaning that the information is confidential and may not be made available to the general public.<\/p>\n

There are 12 other PG-Servers in data centres around the world, each of which can gather data about a whole country and network (specifically an autonomous system, or AS).<\/p>\n

Later in the presentation, on an unclassified slide showing a graph of Autonomous Systems generated by Treasure Map, the Internet Solutions (IS) network and its peering relationship with the Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited is shown.<\/p>\n

On a subsequent slide classified as \u201csecret\u201d, which shows Pakistan Telecom’s AS but not that of IS, Internet Solutions\u2019 peering partner is shown to contain SIGINT collection access points within its network.<\/p>\n

SIGINT refers to the NSA’s signals intelligence data gathering programme.<\/p>\n

Internet Solutions was asked about its mention in the newly released NSA document, but the company was not immediately able to respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

This article was first published on MyBroadband<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More on the NSA<\/h3>\n

South Africa on NSA spying list<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

NSA spying scope wider than previously thought<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

New bill fights against NSA spying<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Snowden spoiled it for whistleblowers: NSA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A newly released document from Edward Snowden\u2019s archive indicates that the NSA has made its way into at least one South African data centre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":59859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,6082,5610],"class_list":["post-68582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-nsa","tag-spying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68592,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68582\/revisions\/68592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}