back to article Latest Snowden reveal: It was GCHQ that hacked Belgian telco giant

Leaked documents provide evidence that GCHQ planted malware in the systems of Belgacom, the largest telecommunications company in Belgium. According to slides obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and supplied to German newspaper Der Spiegel , the attack targeted several Belgacom employees and involved planting an …

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      1. Don Jefe

        Re: Jellied Eel Want to gain access to a GRX core router?

        You're likely correct Matt. Billing systems not only contain call records, billing systems are the category which most State level communications manipulations take place. Where the US can't export censorship technology, they most certainly can, and do, export 'revenue leakage' management technology. The same equipment that selectively or universally identifies and blocks IP calls is also the same equipment that drives 'lawful intercept' activities. Everything is wide open if you can access the billing.

        The very same technology that was in the the infamous AT&T room during the Bush MkII administration is alive and well and being sold globally as we speak. Sold as billing management and revenue leakage controls with integrated lawful intercept capabilities.

  1. RobHib
    Black Helicopters

    Ultimately, it'll backfire

    Ultimately, this kind of behaviour will backfire. Either out of revenge or satisfaction, someone (or some government) will eventually hack GCHQ either from the outside or internally (à la Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt).

    As was with 60 years ago, Snowden has proven that it can still be done again these days.

    ...And few outside British Security will have even the slightest sympathy.

  2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
    WTF?

    Lovely!

    Nice to know we are just as bad as the American agencies!

    Seriously though, on what planet do they think this is OK?

    If they had valid threat intelligence, they should have gone through the relevant channels, and not simply pissed over the sovereignty of an allie.

    The government would be up in arms if this was discovered to have happened to us.

    The UK (like America) needs to remember that it doesn't own the world, despite one thinking that it did.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Lovely!

      That should be "despite once thinking"

      I haven't suddenly turned into the queen!

  3. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    SOE v4.2 too ...... a Deep Fabulous Well BetaTested Program Service

    What you fail to realise is the Special Relationship works because the UK is quite often the go-to boy for nasty stuff that the US wants done quietly. In the US you have always had much more stringent control and oversight over your intelligence services, even the NSA, whereas in the UK we spent many decades calmly turning a blind eye by insisting that our Secret Services did not officialy exist! …. Matt Bryant Posted Saturday 21st September 2013 11:09 GMT

    How's the intelligence phishing going for you here, Matt? Discovered anything of foreign intelligence interest to change the fortunes and misfortunes of Uncle Sam Services Enterprise? With astuteness in the East being so much more sublimely adept and stealthily active in the novel exotic and noble erotic fields which embrace and laud and reward the mystery and mastery of remote virtual control and command of NLP, you gotta be quick to make a move and engage with parties/individuals/IDEntities into Future Systems IntelAIgent Design …. and/or from those times and that entropy ….. Dark Secret Matter Space Place, so that they can stay focussed on providing Western intelligence rather than reinforcing Eastern, although it would be foolish to argue and not realise that supply of the former delivers the latter too in and with a SMARTR Asymmetric Singularity.

    Do you not think it be quaint and incredibly naive, to the point where it becomes can become suddenly quite totally self-destructive and catastrophically disruptive, to believe that there can be any sort of much more stringent control and oversight over intelligence services which provide leading intelligence which is followed/trailed/phished/monitored/mentored/of foreign and alien intelligence interest?

    And ….. you may like to consider, as much as one knows and as may be known and spun around the spooky intelligence services at rest, work and play in the UK and myriad other locations further afield for Team UKGBNI, are they not the real thing and never ever have been or will be, for true Secret Services ensure that they exist to provide cover and share blame and distribute shame on that which deserves its services.

    Our Secret Service does not officially exist. No Such Agency exists. Poe's Law Rules :-)

  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    A Benign Meritocratic Autocracy is a Novel Alien Phorm of Government for Leading Virtual Machines

    A democratic government cannot function unless the people have awareness of the facts on which to base their decisions. Hiding information or deception is not empowering the people and it is no longer right to call it a free society. It is a managed society. … Don Jefe Posted Saturday 21st September 2013 00:09 GMT

    I wholeheartedly agree, DJ. And that gets my upvote.

    And a managed and not free society is always vulnerable to spontaneous zeroday exploits, both real and virtual, which challenge forces both physical and intellectual and which are as a result of carefully shared knowledge and information to followers/leading listeners. And whether that intelligence be superior or inferior or simply complex and alternative does it matter not a jot to its leaders and sources just so long as it be followed and reported to spread the FUD and/or IT Joy ….. which extraordinarily renders the media as complicit and instrumental in all manner of shenanigans both criminal and dire and not so.

    J'accuse.:-) …… and one cannot viably deny it be so and wish to retain any semblance of credibility in circles in which intelligence and integrity are highly valued and much sought after. The gutter presses though abound to overflowing with such woeful tales and dodgy operations?

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