The US intelligence agency has covertly installed software on nearly 100,000 computers worldwide, allowing it to spy on them, and recruit them for possible cyber attacks, a news report said late Tuesday.
Most were installed by the National Security Agency via network connections, but the agency has devised a way of reaching unconnected computers by means of radio waves, the New York Times reported, citing NSA documents, computer experts and officials.
The radio technology, used since 2008, transmits to and from tiny circuit boards installed in the computers either secretly or by unwitting users, sometimes attached to USB sockets, the report said.
The NSA said the system, which could be used to mount cyber attacks from those machines, is more an “active defence” strategy, it said.
The programme, code-named Quantum, had been used against Russian military networks, and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, EU trade bodies and some countries collaborating with the United States against terrorists, according to the report.
“The combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the US a window it’s never had before,” James Andrew Lewis, cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, was quoted as saying.
There were no signs of either the software or radio-wave hardware being used inside the US, the report said. An NSA spokeswoman was quoted as saying the agency’s activities were only deployed against “valid foreign intelligence targets”.
The Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, discovered in 2010, is thought to have been the first field trial of the technology, the report said.
US President Barack Obama was due on Friday to announce changes to NSA activities, after reviewing advice from a panel that considered industry complaints that some practices were undermining foreign markets’ confidence in US-based technology and digital communications services.