Internet-Blackout in Syrien: Nicht das Regime, sondern Hacker der NSA waren verantwortlich

Am 29. November 2012 berichteten wir, dass das Internet in Syrien ausgefallen war. Wie viele Kommentatoren, haben auch wir die Schuld bei Präsient Baschar al-Assad gesehen. Zu voreilig, wie sich herausstellt. In der gestern verlinkten Wired-Titestory von James Bamford über Edward Snowden berichtet dieser:

One day an intelligence officer told him that TAO—a division of NSA hackers—had attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. This would have given the NSA access to email and other Internet traffic from much of the country. But something went wrong, and the router was bricked instead—rendered totally inoperable. The failure of this router caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to the Internet—although the public didn’t know that the US government was responsible. (This is the first time the claim has been revealed.)

Inside the TAO operations center, the panicked government hackers had what Snowden calls an “oh shit” moment. They raced to remotely repair the router, desperate to cover their tracks and prevent the Syrians from discovering the sophisticated infiltration software used to access the network. But because the router was bricked, they were powerless to fix the problem.

Fortunately for the NSA, the Syrians were apparently more focused on restoring the nation’s Internet than on tracking down the cause of the outage. Back at TAO’s operations center, the tension was broken with a joke that contained more than a little truth: “If we get caught, we can always point the finger at Israel.”

Dank an erlehmann für den Hinweis.