NSA Responsible for Syria's 2012 Internet Blackout: Snowden
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, has revealed more details about past deeds and future plans of the National Security Agency. He said that the United States was, though unintentionally, responsible for Syria's internet blackout in 2012.
In 2012, Syria's access to the internet was cut for two days. According to Wired, the Syrian government had suspected that it might be the doing of "dissenting terrorists"; however, now it is clear as to who was behind the entire episode. Wired, in a long profile of Edward Snowden released Thursday, quoted the whistleblower as revealing the "truth" about the internet outage in Syria.
He said that during the event, a team of the NSA was trying to install malware on a central router within Syria so as to gain access to a major chunk of the country's internet traffic. However, it ended up rendering the router unusable - leading to internet blackout, The Verge reports. The team tried repairing the router, but failed to do so. He expressed surprise at the fact that until now no evidence actually came out to reveal this episode.
Snowden further said that the United States is also planning on developing a program for cyberdefense, which will be a fully-autonomous one, The Latin Post reports.
He was being interviewed by James Bamford, Wired's NSA tracker who had suspected NSA's activities to be fishy more than a year before Snowden's revelations about the agency. During the interview, the former NSA worker went on to discuss about the unintended consequences of the activities of NSA in the past and another program that the agency is working on which might lead to serious outcomes.
