Misplaced Pages

#760239

83-416: A single processor, called a PEM, in a HEP system (up to sixteen PEMs could be connected) was rather unconventional; via a "program status word (PSW) queue," up to fifty processes could be maintained in hardware at once. The largest system ever delivered had 4 PEMs. The eight-stage instruction pipeline allowed instructions from eight different processes to proceed at once. In fact, only one instruction from

166-402: A shell pipeline , the output of the first process needs to pass to the second one, and so on. Another example is a task that has been decomposed into cooperating but partially independent processes which can run simultaneously (i.e., using concurrency, or true parallelism – the latter model is a particular case of concurrent execution and is feasible whenever multiple CPU cores are available for

249-561: A transparent process for replacing the outdated Data Encryption Standard (DES) by an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Cybersecurity policy expert Susan Landau attributes the NSA's harmonious collaboration with industry and academia in the selection of the AES in 2000—and the Agency's support for the choice of a strong encryption algorithm designed by Europeans rather than by Americans—to Brian Snow , who

332-740: A virtual memory system, where regions of a process's memory may be really on disk and not in main memory at any time. Even portions of active processes/tasks (executing programs) are eligible for swapping to disk, if the portions have not been used recently. Not all parts of an executing program and its data have to be in physical memory for the associated process to be active. An operating system kernel that allows multitasking needs processes to have certain states . Names for these states are not standardised, but they have similar functionality. When processes need to communicate with each other they must share parts of their address spaces or use other forms of inter-process communication (IPC). For instance in

415-546: A "wake-up call" for the need to invest in the agency's infrastructure. In the 1990s the defensive arm of the NSA—the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD)—started working more openly; the first public technical talk by an NSA scientist at a major cryptography conference was J. Solinas' presentation on efficient Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithms at Crypto 1997. The IAD's cooperative approach to academia and industry culminated in its support for

498-695: A 2010 article in The Washington Post , "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7  billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases." Because of its listening task, NSA/CSS has been heavily involved in cryptanalytic research, continuing the work of predecessor agencies which had broken many World War II codes and ciphers (see, for instance, Purple , Venona project , and JN-25 ). In 2004, NSA Central Security Service and

581-805: A budget of $ 14.7 billion. The NSA currently conducts worldwide mass data collection and has been known to physically bug electronic systems as one method to this end. The NSA is also alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet , which severely damaged Iran's nuclear program . The NSA, alongside the CIA, maintains a physical presence in many countries across the globe; the CIA/NSA joint Special Collection Service (a highly classified intelligence team) inserts eavesdropping devices in high-value targets (such as presidential palaces or embassies). SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, [and] breaking and entering". Unlike

664-582: A file xkeyscorerules100.txt, sourced by German TV stations NDR and WDR , who claim to have excerpts from its source code) reveal that the NSA tracks users of privacy-enhancing software tools, including Tor ; an anonymous email service provided by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and readers of the Linux Journal . Linus Torvalds ,

747-731: A given process was allowed to be present in the pipeline at any point in time. Therefore, the full processor throughput of 10 MIPS could only be achieved when eight or more processes were active; no single process could achieve throughput greater than 1.25 MIPS. This type of multithreading processing classifies the HEP as a barrel processor . The hardware implementation of the HEP PEM was emitter-coupled logic . Processes were classified as either user-level or supervisor-level. User-level processes could create supervisor-level processes, which were used to manage user-level processes and perform I/O. Processes of

830-412: A location set the state to "empty," while writing to it set the state to "full." A programmer could allow processes to halt after trying to read from an empty location or write to a full location, enforcing critical sections. The switched network between elements resembled, in many ways, a modern computer network. On the network were sets of nodes, each of which had three links. When a packet arrived at

913-527: A major effort to secure tactical communications among U.S. forces during the war with mixed success. The NESTOR family of compatible secure voice systems it developed was widely deployed during the Vietnam War , with about 30,000 NESTOR sets produced. However, a variety of technical and operational problems limited their use, allowing the North Vietnamese to exploit and intercept U.S. communications. In

SECTION 10

#1732859198761

996-482: A matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti–Vietnam War leaders and the agency's participation in economic espionage . In 2013, the NSA had many of its secret surveillance programs revealed to the public by Edward Snowden , a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed that

1079-575: A memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland. The memorial is a, "tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and long-lasting contributions to American cryptology". NSA employees must be retired for more than fifteen years to qualify for the memorial. NSA's infrastructure deteriorated in the 1990s as defense budget cuts resulted in maintenance deferrals. On January 24, 2000, NSA headquarters suffered

1162-446: A new system out of spare parts on napkins at a local steakhouse and put it into operation in the course of the ensuing week. The HEP's primary application programming language was a unique Fortran variant. In time C , Pascal , and SISAL were added. The syntax of data variables using full-empty bits prepended '$ ' before their name. So 'A' would name a local variable, but $ A would be a locking full-empty variable. Application dead-lock

1245-413: A node, it consulted a routing table and attempted to forward the packet closer to its destination. If a node became congested, any incoming packets were passed on without routing. Packets treated in such a manner had their priority level increased; when several packets vied for a single node, a packet with a higher priority level would be routed before ones with lower priority levels. Another component of

1328-477: A result of the boomerang routing of Canadian Internet service providers . A document included in NSA files released with Glenn Greenwald 's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and other NSA units gain access to hardware. They intercept routers , servers , and other network hardware being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they are delivered. This

1411-457: A secret filing system that was destroyed in 1974. Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon , there were several investigations into suspected misuse of FBI, CIA and NSA facilities. Senator Frank Church uncovered previously unknown activity, such as a CIA plot (ordered by the administration of President John F. Kennedy ) to assassinate Fidel Castro . The investigation also uncovered NSA's wiretaps on targeted U.S. citizens. After

1494-403: A time: it is impossible to run more programs at the same time. A program might need some resource , such as an input device, which has a large delay, or a program might start some slow operation, such as sending output to a printer. This would lead to processor being "idle" (unused). To keep the processor busy at all times, the execution of such a program is halted and the operating system switches

1577-403: A total network outage for three days caused by an overloaded network. Incoming traffic was successfully stored on agency servers, but it could not be directed and processed. The agency carried out emergency repairs for $ 3  million to get the system running again. (Some incoming traffic was also directed instead to Britain's GCHQ for the time being.) Director Michael Hayden called the outage

1660-573: A unit to decipher coded communications in World War II , it was officially formed as the NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of the Cold War, it became the largest of the U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget, but information available as of 2013 indicates that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) pulled ahead in this regard, with

1743-416: Is "something that takes up time", as opposed to "memory", which is "something that takes up space". The above description applies to both processes managed by an operating system, and processes as defined by process calculi . If a process requests something for which it must wait, it will be blocked. When the process is in the blocked state , it is eligible for swapping to disk, but this is transparent in

SECTION 20

#1732859198761

1826-910: Is believed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian to be the model for the comprehensive worldwide mass archiving of communications which NSA is engaged in as of 2013. A dedicated unit of the NSA locates targets for the CIA for extrajudicial assassination in the Middle East. The NSA has also spied extensively on the European Union, the United Nations, and numerous governments including allies and trading partners in Europe, South America, and Asia. In June 2015, WikiLeaks published documents showing that NSA spied on French companies. WikiLeaks also published documents showing that NSA spied on federal German ministries since

1909-465: Is called concurrency . For security and reliability, most modern operating systems prevent direct communication between independent processes, providing strictly mediated and controlled inter-process communication. In general, a computer system process consists of (or is said to own ) the following resources: The operating system holds most of this information about active processes in data structures called process control blocks . Any subset of

1992-439: Is provided by CPU's time-sharing that is a method for interleaving the execution of users' processes and threads, and even of independent kernel tasks – although the latter feature is feasible only in preemptive kernels such as Linux . Preemption has an important side effect for interactive processes that are given higher priority with respect to CPU bound processes, therefore users are immediately assigned computing resources at

2075-491: Is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems . The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine . The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees. Originating as

2158-403: Is said to own resources, of which an image of its program (in memory) is one such resource. However, in multiprocessing systems many processes may run off of, or share, the same reentrant program at the same location in memory, but each process is said to own its own image of the program. Processes are often called "tasks" in embedded operating systems. The sense of "process" (or task)

2241-605: The Department of State , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA had failed to achieve its goals. The results of the investigation led to improvements and its redesignation as the National Security Agency. The National Security Council issued a memorandum of October 24, 1952, that revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 . On

2324-696: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when within U.S. borders. Alleged Echelon-related activities, including its use for motives other than national security, including political and industrial espionage , received criticism from countries outside the UKUSA alliance. The NSA was also involved in planning to blackmail people with " SEXINT ", intelligence gained about a potential target's sexual activity and preferences. Those targeted had not committed any apparent crime nor were they charged with one. To support its facial recognition program,

2407-703: The National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed to expand the NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Program. As part of the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54), signed on January 8, 2008, by President Bush, the NSA became the lead agency to monitor and protect all of

2490-680: The U.S. Army cryptographic section of military intelligence known as MI-8, the U.S. government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber , in 1919. The Black Chamber was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization. Jointly funded by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial code company; it produced and sold such codes for business use. Its true mission, however,

2573-626: The US Court of Appeals . The court also added that the US intelligence leaders, who publicly defended it, were not telling the truth. NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from various organizations and individuals, the Internet, telephone calls, and other intercepted forms of communication. Its secure communications mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential, or secret government communications. According to

Heterogeneous Element Processor - Misplaced Pages Continue

2656-482: The 1990s. Even Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel 's cellphones and phones of her predecessors had been intercepted. Edward Snowden revealed in June 2013 that between February 8 and March 8, 2013, the NSA collected about 124.8  billion telephone data items and 97.1  billion computer data items throughout the world, as was displayed in charts from an internal NSA tool codenamed Boundless Informant . Initially, it

2739-581: The Black Chamber access to cable traffic of foreign embassies and consulates. Soon, these companies publicly discontinued their collaboration. Despite the Chamber's initial successes, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson , who defended his decision by stating, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." During World War II , the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS)

2822-484: The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage , the NSA does not publicly conduct human intelligence gathering . The NSA is entrusted with assisting with and coordinating, SIGINT elements for other government organizations—which are prevented by Executive Order from engaging in such activities on their own. As part of these responsibilities,

2905-658: The Church Committee hearings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was passed. This was designed to limit the practice of mass surveillance in the United States . In 1986, the NSA intercepted the communications of the Libyan government during the immediate aftermath of the Berlin discotheque bombing . The White House asserted that the NSA interception had provided "irrefutable" evidence that Libya

2988-581: The NSA is intercepting "millions of images per day". The Real Time Regional Gateway is a data collection program introduced in 2005 in Iraq by the NSA during the Iraq War that consisted of gathering all electronic communication, storing it, then searching and otherwise analyzing it. It was effective in providing information about Iraqi insurgents who had eluded less comprehensive techniques. This "collect it all" strategy introduced by NSA director, Keith B. Alexander ,

3071-447: The NSA that allowed the export of a version that supported stronger keys with 64 bits, but 24 of the bits were encrypted with a special key and included in the message to provide a "workload reduction factor" for the NSA. This strengthened the protection for users of Notes outside the US against private-sector industrial espionage , but not against spying by the US government. While it is assumed that foreign transmissions terminating in

3154-493: The NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people's movements using cell phones metadata . Internationally, research has pointed to the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through " boomerang routing ". The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in World War I . A code and cipher decryption unit

3237-493: The NSA was a trusted partner with academia and industry in the development of cryptographic standards started to come to an end when, as part of the change in the NSA in the post-September 11 era, Snow was replaced as Technical Director, Jacobs retired, and IAD could no longer effectively oppose proposed actions by the offensive arm of the NSA. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks , the NSA created new IT systems to deal with

3320-522: The NSA was not known to the public at that time. Due to its ultra-secrecy, the U.S. intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No Such Agency". In the 1960s, the NSA played a key role in expanding U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War by providing evidence of a North Vietnamese attack on the American destroyer USS  Maddox during the Gulf of Tonkin incident . A secret operation, code-named " MINARET ",

3403-560: The NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog, after implanting Cottonmouth, the NSA can establish a network bridge "that allows the NSA to load exploit software onto modified computers as well as allowing the NSA to relay commands and data between hardware and software implants." NSA's mission, as outlined in Executive Order 12333 in 1981, is to collect information that constitutes "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence" while not "acquiring information concerning

Heterogeneous Element Processor - Misplaced Pages Continue

3486-458: The OS, a process may be made up of multiple threads of execution that execute instructions concurrently . While a computer program is a passive collection of instructions typically stored in a file on disk, a process is the execution of those instructions after being loaded from the disk into memory. Several processes may be associated with the same program; for example, opening up several instances of

3569-591: The U.S. (such as a non-U.S. citizen accessing a U.S. website) subject non-U.S. citizens to NSA surveillance, recent research into boomerang routing has raised new concerns about the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries. Boomerang routing occurs when an Internet transmission that originates and terminates in a single country transits another. Research at the University of Toronto has suggested that approximately 25% of Canadian domestic traffic may be subject to NSA surveillance activities as

3652-574: The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the International Organization for Standardization (aka ISO). This memo appears to give credence to previous speculation by cryptographers at Microsoft Research . Edward Snowden claims that the NSA often bypasses encryption altogether by lifting information before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted. XKeyscore rules (as specified in

3735-521: The University of Maryland). Messerschmitt was the only client to put the HEP into use for "real" applications; the other clients used it for experimenting with parallel algorithms. The BRL system was used to prepare a movie using the BRL-CAD software as its only real application. Faster and larger designs for HEP-2 and HEP-3 were started but never completed. The architectural concept would later be embodied with

3818-504: The ability to monitor a large proportion of the world's transmitted civilian telephone, fax, and data traffic. During the early 1970s, the first of what became more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed at Menwith Hill. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell reported in 1988 on the " ECHELON " surveillance program, an extension of the UKUSA Agreement on global signals intelligence SIGINT , and detailed how

3901-563: The advent of concepts such as time-sharing , computer networks , and multiple-CPU shared memory computers, the old "multiprogramming" gave way to true multitasking , multiprocessing and, later, multithreading . National Security Agency The National Security Agency ( NSA ) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense , under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA

3984-517: The aftermath of the Watergate scandal , a congressional hearing in 1975 led by Senator Frank Church revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's SIGINT intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock . The NSA tracked these individuals in

4067-761: The agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service (CSS), which facilitates cooperation between the NSA and other U.S. defense cryptanalysis components. To further ensure streamlined communication between the signals intelligence community divisions, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service. The NSA's actions have been

4150-497: The appearance of many processes executing simultaneously (that is, in parallel ), though in fact only one process can be executing at any one time on a single CPU (unless the CPU has multiple cores, then multithreading or other similar technologies can be used). It is usual to associate a single process with a main program, and child processes with any spin-off, parallel processes, which behave like asynchronous subroutines. A process

4233-544: The code-name Horizon. Process (computing) In computing , a process is the instance of a computer program that is being executed by one or many threads . There are many different process models, some of which are light weight, but almost all processes (even entire virtual machines ) are rooted in an operating system (OS) process which comprises the program code, assigned system resources, physical and logical access permissions, and data structures to initiate, control and coordinate execution activity. Depending on

SECTION 50

#1732859198761

4316-526: The eavesdropping operations worked. On November 3, 1999, the BBC reported that they had confirmation from the Australian Government of the existence of a powerful "global spying network" code-named Echelon, that could "eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet" with Britain and the United States as the chief protagonists. They confirmed that Menwith Hill was "linked directly to

4399-516: The equivalent agencies in the United Kingdom ( Government Communications Headquarters ), Canada ( Communications Security Establishment ), Australia ( Australian Signals Directorate ), and New Zealand ( Government Communications Security Bureau ), otherwise known as the UKUSA group, was reported to be in command of the operation of the so-called ECHELON system. Its capabilities were suspected to include

4482-513: The federal government's computer networks from cyber-terrorism . A part of the NSA's mission is to serve as a combat support agency for the Department of Defense. Operations by the National Security Agency can be divided into three types: "Echelon" was created in the incubator of the Cold War . Today it is a legacy system , and several NSA stations are closing. NSA/CSS, in combination with

4565-504: The flood of information from new technologies like the Internet and cell phones. ThinThread contained advanced data mining capabilities. It also had a "privacy mechanism"; surveillance was stored encrypted; decryption required a warrant. The research done under this program may have contributed to the technology used in later systems. ThinThread was canceled when Michael Hayden chose Trailblazer , which did not include ThinThread's privacy system. Trailblazer Project ramped up in 2002 and

4648-472: The founder of Linux kernel , joked during a LinuxCon keynote on September 18, 2013, that the NSA, who is the founder of SELinux , wanted a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus' father, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), revealed that the NSA actually did this. When my oldest son was asked the same question: "Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?" he said "No", but at

4731-607: The headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland". NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibited the interception or collection of information about "... U.S. persons , entities, corporations or organizations...." without explicit written legal permission from the United States Attorney General when the subject is located abroad, or

4814-517: The operating system implementation, switches could be performed when tasks initiate and wait for completion of input/output operations, when a task voluntarily yields the CPU, on hardware interrupts , and when the operating system scheduler decides that a process has expired its fair share of CPU time (e.g, by the Completely Fair Scheduler of the Linux kernel ). A common form of multitasking

4897-709: The performance of a CDC 7600 -class computer in the Cray-1 era. HEP systems were acquired by the Ballistic Research Laboratory (four PEM system), Los Alamos , the Argonne National Laboratory (single PEM), the National Security Agency , and Germany's Messerschmitt (three PEMS system. Denelcor also delivered a two PEM system to the University of Georgia in exchange for them providing software assistance (the system had also been offered to

4980-618: The processes that are ready to run). It is even possible for two or more processes to be running on different machines that may run different operating system (OS), therefore some mechanisms for communication and synchronization (called communications protocols for distributed computing) are needed (e.g., the Message Passing Interface {MPI}). By the early 1960s, computer control software had evolved from monitor control software , for example IBSYS , to executive control software . Over time, computers got faster while computer time

5063-400: The processor to run another program. To the user, it will appear that the programs run at the same time (hence the term "parallel"). Shortly thereafter, the notion of a "program" was expanded to the notion of an "executing program and its context". The concept of a process was born, which also became necessary with the invention of re-entrant code . Threads came somewhat later. However, with

SECTION 60

#1732859198761

5146-607: The resources, typically at least the processor state, may be associated with each of the process' threads in operating systems that support threads or child processes. The operating system keeps its processes separate and allocates the resources they need, so that they are less likely to interfere with each other and cause system failures (e.g., deadlock or thrashing ). The operating system may also provide mechanisms for inter-process communication to enable processes to interact in safe and predictable ways. A multitasking operating system may just switch between processes to give

5229-545: The same class were required to be grouped into one of seven user tasks and seven supervisor tasks. Each processor, in addition to the PSW queue and instruction pipeline, contained instruction memory, 2,048 64-bit general purpose registers and 4,096 constant registers. Constant registers were differentiated by the fact that only supervisor processes could modify their contents. The processors themselves contained no data memory; instead, data memory modules could be separately attached to

5312-504: The same day, Truman issued a second memorandum that called for the establishment of the NSA. The actual establishment of the NSA was done by a November 4 memo by Robert A. Lovett , the Secretary of Defense , changing the name of the AFSA to the NSA, and making the new agency responsible for all communications intelligence. Since President Truman's memo was a classified document, the existence of

5395-408: The same program often results in more than one process being executed. Multitasking is a method to allow multiple processes to share processors (CPUs) and other system resources. Each CPU (core) executes a single process at a time. However, multitasking allows each processor to switch between tasks that are being executed without having to wait for each task to finish ( preemption ). Depending on

5478-556: The same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, everybody understood that the NSA had approached him. IBM Notes was the first widely adopted software product to use public key cryptography for client-server and server–server authentication and encryption of data. Until US laws regulating encryption were changed in 2000, IBM and Lotus were prohibited from exporting versions of Notes that supported symmetric encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits. In 1997, Lotus negotiated an agreement with

5561-428: The simple pressing of a key or when moving a mouse. Furthermore, applications like video and music reproduction are given some kind of real-time priority, preempting any other lower priority process. In time-sharing systems, context switches are performed rapidly, which makes it seem like multiple processes are being executed simultaneously on the same processor. This seemingly-simultaneous execution of multiple processes

5644-451: The switched network was the sO System, with its own memory and many individual DEC UNIBUS buses attached for disks and other peripherals. The system also had the ability to save the full/empty bits not normally visible directly. The initial IO System performance was shown to be woefully inadequate due to the high latency in starting the IO operations. Ron Natalie (from BRL) and Burton Smith designed

5727-454: The switched network. The HEP memory consisted of completely separate instruction memory (up to 128 MBs) and data memory (up to 1 GB). Users saw 64-bit words, but in reality, data memory words were 72-bit with the extra bits used for state, see next paragraph, parity, tagging, and other uses. The HEP implemented a type of mutual exclusion in which all registers and locations in data memory had associated "empty" and "full" states. Reading from

5810-565: The unit consisted of Yardley and two civilian clerks. It absorbed the Navy's cryptanalysis functions in July 1918. World War I ended on November 11, 1918 , and the army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) moved to New York City on May 20, 1919, where it continued intelligence activities as the Code Compilation Company under the direction of Yardley. After the disbandment of

5893-456: Was behind the bombing, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan cited as a justification for the 1986 United States bombing of Libya . In 1999, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information'. That year, the NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor ,

5976-678: Was created to intercept and decipher the communications of the Axis powers . When the war ended, the SIS was reorganized as the Army Security Agency (ASA), and it was placed under the leadership of the Director of Military Intelligence. On May 20, 1949, all cryptologic activities were centralized under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). This organization

6059-515: Was described by an NSA manager as "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they preposition access points into hard target networks around the world." Computers seized by the NSA due to interdiction are often modified with a physical device known as Cottonmouth. Cottonmouth is a device that can be inserted in the USB port of a computer to establish remote access to the targeted machine. According to

6142-507: Was established as the Cable and Telegraph Section, which was also known as the Cipher Bureau. It was headquartered in Washington, D.C., and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct congressional authorization. During the war, it was relocated in the army's organizational chart several times. On July 5, 1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit. At that point,

6225-496: Was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The AFSA was tasked with directing the Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except those of U.S. military intelligence units. However, the AFSA was unable to centralize communications intelligence and failed to coordinate with civilian agencies that shared its interests, such as

6308-520: Was reported that some of these data reflected eavesdropping on citizens in countries like Germany, Spain, and France, but later on, it became clear that those data were collected by European agencies during military missions abroad and were subsequently shared with NSA. In 2013, reporters uncovered a secret memo that claims the NSA created and pushed for the adoption of the Dual EC DRBG encryption standard that contained built-in vulnerabilities in 2006 to

6391-516: Was set up by the NSA to monitor the phone communications of Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker , as well as key leaders of the civil rights movement , including Martin Luther King Jr. , and prominent U.S. journalists and athletes who criticized the Vietnam War . However, the project turned out to be controversial, and an internal review by the NSA concluded that its Minaret program was "disreputable if not outright illegal". The NSA mounted

6474-626: Was still neither cheap nor fully utilized; such an environment made multiprogramming possible and necessary. Multiprogramming means that several programs run concurrently . At first, more than one program ran on a single processor, as a result of underlying uniprocessor computer architecture, and they shared scarce and limited hardware resources; consequently, the concurrency was of a serial nature. On later systems with multiple processors , multiple programs may run concurrently in parallel . Programs consist of sequences of instructions for processors. A single processor can run only one instruction at

6557-529: Was the Technical Director of IAD and represented the NSA as cochairman of the Technical Working Group for the AES competition, and Michael Jacobs , who headed IAD at the time. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the NSA believed that it had public support for a dramatic expansion of its surveillance activities. According to Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes , the period when

6640-422: Was thus possible. Problematic, failure to '$ ' could introduce unintended numerical inaccuracy. The first HEP operating system was HEPOS. Mike Muuss was involved in a Unix port for the Ballistic Research Laboratory. HEPOS was not a Unix-like operating system. Although it was known to have poor cost-performance, the HEP received attention due to what were, at the time, several revolutionary features. The HEP had

6723-417: Was to be a realization of information processing at higher speeds in cyberspace. The massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic, was revealed to the public in a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents beginning in June 2013. Most of the disclosures were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden . On 4 September 2020, the NSA's surveillance program was ruled unlawful by

6806-543: Was to break the communications (chiefly diplomatic) of other nations. At the Washington Naval Conference , it aided American negotiators by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many of the conference delegations, including the Japanese . The Black Chamber successfully persuaded Western Union , the largest U.S. telegram company at the time, as well as several other communications companies, to illegally give

6889-697: Was worked on by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Boeing , Computer Sciences Corporation , IBM , and Litton Industries . Some NSA whistleblowers complained internally about major problems surrounding Trailblazer. This led to investigations by Congress and the NSA and DoD Inspectors General . The project was canceled in early 2004. Turbulence started in 2005. It was developed in small, inexpensive "test" pieces, rather than one grand plan like Trailblazer. It also included offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, like injecting malware into remote computers. Congress criticized Turbulence in 2007 for having similar bureaucratic problems as Trailblazer. It

#760239