Latest news with #spies
Washington Post
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Mission: Unaccountable
Chris Klimek is a film critic in Washington. You don't often see this in movies, but most spies have to be boring to be good at their jobs. In the 2006 J.J. Abrams-directed 'Mission: Impossible III,' Tom Cruise's alter ego, superspy Ethan Hunt, has retired from mask-pulls and gymnastic infiltrations. Yet his job remains so black bag that even his beautiful physician fiancée thinks he's a desk jockey for the Virginia Transportation Department. In an early party scene, he gives us a brief soliloquy, delivered with Cruise's patented help-me-help-you rectitude, about traffic patterns: 'It's amazing. It's like a living organism.'
Russia Today
a day ago
- General
- Russia Today
CIA running out of international informants and spies
The CIA is grappling with difficulties in recruiting foreign informants and 'needs more spies,' The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing current and former intelligence officials. Chief among the problems the sources listed is the global proliferation of public surveillance systems and advances in facial recognition, which make it harder for operatives to avoid detection. CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis acknowledged the issue in a recent public interview, saying that although 'some of the tools and techniques from the 1960s or '70s might still work today, a lot of them need to be updated and refreshed.' Other officials pointed to past setbacks, according to the WaPo, including the agency's aggressive recruitment of Chinese officials in the early 2000s. Beijing's security forces later dismantled that network, reportedly imprisoning and executing up to two dozen CIA assets. The COVID-19 pandemic also hindered operations, the report said, by disrupting face-to-face meetings with informants due to lockdowns and travel restrictions. US President Donald Trump's current plan to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates as part of budget cuts threatens to further reduce the CIA's footprint globally. In an effort to attract defectors, the CIA has produced what the reports described as 'Hollywood-quality' videos targeting Russian and Chinese audiences, which have been distributed via social media. While officials told the Post that some Russians have responded, they declined to provide specifics. The ads sparked incredulity in both countries and parodies that reversed the agency's message by highlighting American problems. Chinese netizens are having fun with the CIA's recruitment ad for Chinese spies!They've turned it around and made it even more convincing than the original! 🤣 Domestically, the CIA's recruitment of new agents has declined by double-digit percentages since 2019, a former official told the Post. The newspaper noted that a recent directive from the White House that led to the circulation of an unclassified list of new hires — including first names and initials — could impact morale and security. In 2021, the agency was ridiculed for a recruitment video featuring a 'cisgender Millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.' Ellis said the current leadership is focused on building 'the ultimate meritocracy at the CIA.'
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
REVEALED: The fake websites including a Star Wars fan page the CIA used to communicate with spies around the world
The CIA reportedly used a fake Star Wars fan site to communicate with its spies around the world. Amateur security researcher Ciro Santilli recently scoured the Internet to find sites the spy agency built in the early 2000s to communicate with its informants in other countries, 404 Media reports. Among the sites he found was which included a stock image of a boy dressed as a Jedi, pictures of R2D2 and C-3P0, along with ads for Star Wars video games and Lego sets of the time. Santilli dug through a mass of historic domain names, analyzed each sites HTML and used bots to bypass the Wayback Machine to determine what they may have looked like at the time. 'The simplest way to put it - yes, the CIA absolutely had a Star Wars fan website with a secretly embedded communication system,' Zach Edwards, an independent cybersecurity researcher confirmed. 'And while I can't account for everything included in the research from Ciro, his findings seem very sound.' The site was shut down more than a decade ago and it now redirects to the CIA's homepage. But it was not the only fake site the Central Intelligence Agency was using to communicate with its informants. Others included a fan site for the late comedian Johnny Carson, a third was about extreme sports and a fourth was for fans of Brazilian music. There were also websites called Rasta Direct, Fitness Dawg, Iranian soccer pages and a Russian wrestling website, Reuters previously revealed. Some of the sites reportedly targeted France, Spain and Brazil based on their language and content. Each fake website was assigned to only one spy in order to limit exposure of the entire network in case any single agent was captured. They simply had to enter a password into the search bar, which would cause a secret messaging window to popup in which they could covertly speak with their handlers. But when former President Barack Obama announced the discovery of a secret Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in 2009, Iranian officials doubled down on their efforts to find informants who may be speaking with American intelligence agencies, according to a Yahoo News investigation in 2018. They then easily tracked down the fake websites using Google. The sites had sequential IP addresses, as the hosting spaces for these fake sites were often purchased in bulk by the dozens and often from the same internet provider on the same server space. The HTML code for the search bar on the sites also contained the word 'password,' and the website's coding even included the words 'message' and 'compose' - indicating there was a secret messaging system. There was also a website called Rasta Direct (pictured) as well as sites for Iranian soccer fans 'The CIA really failed with this,' said Bill Marczak of the University of Toledo's Citizen Lab, adding that the messaging system 'stuck out like a sore thumb.' By 2011, Iranian authorities successfully dismantled the CIA network in its country, and either executed or imprisoned the informants. Meanwhile, authorities in China also found similar websites being used in their country - and executed more than two dozen CIA sources between 2011 and 2012. But the CIA reportedly was not aware that the system had been compromised until 2013, when it started to notice that many of its agents began to go missing. At that point, the agency was able to extricate some of its agents and resettle them. It also took down the websites. In 2021, the CIA finally admitted to the communications failure with a memo reprimanding spies for poor tradecraft, being overly trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and 'putting mission over security' by moving too fast and not paying enough attention to potential risks. However, Reuters reports that Langley had known about the security risks involved and only used the mass-produced sites for sources whom it did not consider fully vetted or had limited, albeit potentially valuable, access to state secrets. The top-tier informants instead used custom-made covert communications tools. Still, former officials described the intelligence setback as 'incredibly damaging' as House and Senate intelligence committees held closed-door hearings into the scandal. When asked why Santilli decided to track down the now defunct websites, he said it was because of his interest in Chinese politics, his penchant for TV adaptations of spy novels and 'sticking it up to the CIA for spying on fellow democracies.' 'It reveals a much larger number of websites, it gives a broader understanding of the CIA's interests over time, including more specific democracies which may have been targeted, which were not previously mentioned, and also a statistical understanding of how much importance they were giving to different zones at the time - and unsurprisingly the Middle East comes on top,' he explained. Edwards, meanwhile, said the scandal 'is a reminder that developers make mistakes and sometimes it take years for someone to find those mistakes. 'But this is also not just your average "developer mistake" type of scenario,' he admitted.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Spy Factory
Artem Shmyrev had everyone fooled. The Russian intelligence officer seemed to have built the perfect cover identity. He ran a successful 3-D printing business and shared an upscale apartment in Rio de Janeiro with his Brazilian girlfriend and a fluffy orange-and-white Maine coon cat. But most important, he had an authentic birth certificate and passport that cemented his alias as Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, a 34-year-old Brazilian citizen. After six years lying low, he was impatient to begin real spy work. 'No one wants to feel loser,' he wrote in a 2021 text message to his Russian wife, who was also an intelligence officer, using imperfect English. 'That is why I continue working and hoping.' He was not alone. For years, a New York Times investigation found, Russia used Brazil as a launchpad for its most elite intelligence officers, known as illegals. In an audacious and far-reaching operation, the spies shed their Russian pasts. They started businesses, made friends and had love affairs — events that, over many years, became the building blocks of entirely new identities. Major Russian spy operations have been uncovered in the past, including in the United States in 2010. This was different. The goal was not to spy on Brazil, but to become Brazilian. Once cloaked in credible back stories, they would set off for the United States, Europe or the Middle East and begin working in earnest. The Russians essentially turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives like Mr. Shmyrev. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Middle-class cheating wives reveal the diabolical ways they get away with their affairs - including the Google calendar trick that fools many a cuckold: SEALED SECTION
No one wakes up thinking, 'Today feels like a good day to become a cheating bastard.' And yet... here we are. One minute you're in a perfectly fine relationship, reheating last night's pasta and arguing about whose turn it is to take the bins out. The next, you're booking hotel rooms under fake names and experiencing the kind of adrenaline rush normally reserved for MI6 spies and diamond smugglers with suspiciously full underpants.
