(Concerning) The Farewell Dossier
by Rosa Miriam Elizalde
digital@jrebelde.cip.cu
(September 17 2007)
In few words, from the beginning of the 1980s the United States was able to introduce spy codes into the software that the USSR bought, allowing the Americans to manipulate them at a distance. The economic damage was terrible - to the point that experts considered this disaster as one of the main causes of the Soviet economic crisis.
A reader wrote me a few kind words concerning my article from last week, "The Red Fishhook". It reveals skepticism concerning the possibility of a spy from the FBI, or even some a bureaucrat, being able to just press a button in their office and calmly find out what two people are discussing thousands of miles away, while he impassively savors the peanut butter snack that his wife prepared him for lunch.
Hollywood has educated us of the in the idea of the adventurous spy, both tough and elegant, a la Humphrey Bogart, slipping surreptitiously into an impossible place and getting into a fight with a thug, preferably some non-Caucasian ethnic - all without tilting his hat. I hate to upset the reader. For some time - more than what we could imagine - that prototype has been only on celluloid.
The American spy in vogue these days is a bland character, a family man or maybe the loving owner of a yellow cat. They are people who have never run a risk, because they hardly need to rotate the mouse of their computer to examine our coasts and geography with a perspective more exact than that of a invading fleet landing on our shores. If the CIA decides to infiltrate somebody into an Al Qaeda cell, or into the Colombian forests or in a political organization, it uses the services of a company of mercenaries - known by the euphemism of "independent contractors". This reduces all types of costs, including those for politicians.
I finally read a book published in 2004 by the former secretary of the US Air Force, Thomas C Reed, and almost fell out of my seat when I thumbed through the chapter dedicated the "Farewell Dossier", an operation executed by the administration Reagan against the Soviet Union. In few words, from the beginning of the 1980s the United States was able to introduce spy codes into the software that the USSR bought, allowing the Americans to manipulate them at a distance.
At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War, Reed's book prefaced by George Bush (the father), relates with a luxury of details how the US sold computers chips to the Soviet Union that were designed to pass the Soviet security controls, but which caused machines to crash shortly after being employed.
"We sold them pseudo-software that dislocated factories; it was a convincing idea that undermined their defense aviation and aerospace capacities", said Reed, who was member of the Council of National Security and intricately involved in the operation.
The most brilliant plan, he added, consisted of introducing a malicious program well-known as "Trojan" inside the software of the main Soviet gas duct. This was able to lodge in the computer and permit access to external users to obtain information or remotely control the host machine. "Instead of attacking the supply of Soviet gas, that is to say their monetary earnings from the West and from the Soviet domestic economy, we created the gas duct's principal software that would take the natural gas from the Urengoi fields in Siberia, through Kazakhstan, and on to Western Europe. The system that operated the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go crazy. After a suitable period of time, it would reset the speed of the pumps and the configuration of the valves to produce pressure greatly above that which the pipes could support ..."
The result was a non-nuclear explosion and the biggest fire seen from space. Parts of the thick walls of the gas duct were found more than eighty kilometers from the site. Although there were no human victims, the economic damage was terrible - to the point that experts considered this disaster as one of the main causes of the Soviet economic crisis; and not only for the explosion, which ultimately was not the worst damage. When they realized that the reason for the systems collapsing was corrupted software, the Soviets faced a terrible nightmare: it would be impossible for their experts to know which of the great quantity of components bought in the western market or copied from American models were corrupted and which were not.
Reed, a little man with a kind face, who is shown smiling on the jacket of his book, concludes the chapter dedicated to the Farewell Dossier with some lines that the Devil would surely subscribe to. "We put their entire technology under suspicion and Reagan then played the Star Wars card. He knew that the Soviet electronics industry was infested with virus, bugs and Trojan horses planted by our intelligence community. It was a brilliant operation. We put everything under suspicion."
Text received by email from Juventud Rebelde on (October 12 2007)
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
digital@jrebelde.cip.cu
(September 17 2007)
In few words, from the beginning of the 1980s the United States was able to introduce spy codes into the software that the USSR bought, allowing the Americans to manipulate them at a distance. The economic damage was terrible - to the point that experts considered this disaster as one of the main causes of the Soviet economic crisis.
A reader wrote me a few kind words concerning my article from last week, "The Red Fishhook". It reveals skepticism concerning the possibility of a spy from the FBI, or even some a bureaucrat, being able to just press a button in their office and calmly find out what two people are discussing thousands of miles away, while he impassively savors the peanut butter snack that his wife prepared him for lunch.
Hollywood has educated us of the in the idea of the adventurous spy, both tough and elegant, a la Humphrey Bogart, slipping surreptitiously into an impossible place and getting into a fight with a thug, preferably some non-Caucasian ethnic - all without tilting his hat. I hate to upset the reader. For some time - more than what we could imagine - that prototype has been only on celluloid.
The American spy in vogue these days is a bland character, a family man or maybe the loving owner of a yellow cat. They are people who have never run a risk, because they hardly need to rotate the mouse of their computer to examine our coasts and geography with a perspective more exact than that of a invading fleet landing on our shores. If the CIA decides to infiltrate somebody into an Al Qaeda cell, or into the Colombian forests or in a political organization, it uses the services of a company of mercenaries - known by the euphemism of "independent contractors". This reduces all types of costs, including those for politicians.
I finally read a book published in 2004 by the former secretary of the US Air Force, Thomas C Reed, and almost fell out of my seat when I thumbed through the chapter dedicated the "Farewell Dossier", an operation executed by the administration Reagan against the Soviet Union. In few words, from the beginning of the 1980s the United States was able to introduce spy codes into the software that the USSR bought, allowing the Americans to manipulate them at a distance.
At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War, Reed's book prefaced by George Bush (the father), relates with a luxury of details how the US sold computers chips to the Soviet Union that were designed to pass the Soviet security controls, but which caused machines to crash shortly after being employed.
"We sold them pseudo-software that dislocated factories; it was a convincing idea that undermined their defense aviation and aerospace capacities", said Reed, who was member of the Council of National Security and intricately involved in the operation.
The most brilliant plan, he added, consisted of introducing a malicious program well-known as "Trojan" inside the software of the main Soviet gas duct. This was able to lodge in the computer and permit access to external users to obtain information or remotely control the host machine. "Instead of attacking the supply of Soviet gas, that is to say their monetary earnings from the West and from the Soviet domestic economy, we created the gas duct's principal software that would take the natural gas from the Urengoi fields in Siberia, through Kazakhstan, and on to Western Europe. The system that operated the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go crazy. After a suitable period of time, it would reset the speed of the pumps and the configuration of the valves to produce pressure greatly above that which the pipes could support ..."
The result was a non-nuclear explosion and the biggest fire seen from space. Parts of the thick walls of the gas duct were found more than eighty kilometers from the site. Although there were no human victims, the economic damage was terrible - to the point that experts considered this disaster as one of the main causes of the Soviet economic crisis; and not only for the explosion, which ultimately was not the worst damage. When they realized that the reason for the systems collapsing was corrupted software, the Soviets faced a terrible nightmare: it would be impossible for their experts to know which of the great quantity of components bought in the western market or copied from American models were corrupted and which were not.
Reed, a little man with a kind face, who is shown smiling on the jacket of his book, concludes the chapter dedicated to the Farewell Dossier with some lines that the Devil would surely subscribe to. "We put their entire technology under suspicion and Reagan then played the Star Wars card. He knew that the Soviet electronics industry was infested with virus, bugs and Trojan horses planted by our intelligence community. It was a brilliant operation. We put everything under suspicion."
Text received by email from Juventud Rebelde on (October 12 2007)
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
posted by Bill Totten at
9:14 PM
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