http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20009101-38.html By Declan McCullagh Politics and Law CNet News June 28, 2010 A clandestine network of Russian spies in the United States used private Wi-Fi networks, flash memory sticks, and text messages concealed in graphical images to exchange information, federal prosecutors said Monday. The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against 11 people who allegedly were covert agents of the Russian government assigned to establish close ties with American policymakers, including White House officials and an unnamed political fundraiser. The court papers made public on Monday (PDF and PDF) include details of 21st century spycraft more high-tech than anything Jason Bourne knew about: defendant Anna Chapman allegedly brought her laptop to a coffee shop on 47th Street in Manhattan in January and transferred data with a Russian government official who drove by in a minivan but never entered the store. In another information exchange two months later, Chapman allegedly opened her laptop while in a bookstore in lower Manhattan--probably the Barnes and Noble store on Greenwich Street--and used a private Wi-Fi network to communicate with the same Russian official who was nearby. Some members of what the FBI calls "the Illegals," meaning agents who adopted cover stories and lived in the United States for decades, allegedly used custom steganographic software developed in Moscow. (Steganography is the practice of concealing secret messages in otherwise innocuous files.) [...] _________________________________________________________________ Attend Black Hat USA 2010, hosted at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada July 24-29th, offering over 60 training sessions and 11 tracks of Briefings from security industry elite. To sign up visit http://www.blackhat.comReceived on Mon Jun 28 2010 - 22:35:22 PDT
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