The Big Book of Spy Stuff

by Bart King

  Hoo-boy. It’s pretty clear that Monzer al-Kassar is bad for almost everybody!

  * * *

  [1] It’s awesome!

  High-Tech Espionage!

  Espionage (pronounced ESS-pee-uh-nahjh) means “spying” or “gathering intelligence.” It’s a very cool word, so use it as much as possible. Sure, some agents like the word “tradecraft” instead. (It means the same thing.) Bor-ing! While the world of “warcraft” is impressive, “tradecraft” sounds like you’re bartering for handmade vests.

  Anyway, sitting down to write about computer espionage, I wondered, “How will this apply to most people?”

  Then I typed in my password to log on to the computer. Wow, I must have taken some Vitamin Duh this morning!

  Computer espionage is something that affects EVERYONE—even those three people in South Carolina who don’t have computers yet. That’s because we all have to protect ourselves from hackers. Yes, passwords should keep our online accounts safe. But I’ve learned that people often pick passwords so lame, any toddler could figure them out!

  Here’s what I mean. This is one of the most popular computer passwords of all time:

  Do you see that? It’s the word password spelled backwards. Wow! This is even cleverer than just using the word password for a password. And guess what? Whether spelled backward or forward, password is one of the most popular passwords around!

  Researchers study the passwords people use. Here is a list of the some of the most common ones:

  123456—One percent of all computer users use this or another series of numbers for their password.

  654321—Backwards thinking.

  iloveyou—Sweet but should read “ilovegettinghacked.”

  abcdef—Or any similar letter sequence.

  abc123—Ooh! Getting tricky!

  [person’s first name]—Because it’s so simple, no one will figure it out! (Unless they try.)

  qwerty—Look where these keys are on the keyboard.

  11111—I just threw my head back and laughed.

  0—Yes, the whole password is the number 0. (That’s just really sad.)

  tigger—Don’t look at me, I’m just reporting this stuff!

  As a spy, you owe it to your profession to have a better password than “tigger.” Try to combine something RANDOM with a PATTERN you can remember. For example, start with a short kooky phrase that you can’t forget, like “spiesR1st.”

  Then try combining that basic password with the different names of the sites you go to. So if you visit Facebook, the password there could be “facebookspiesR1st.” Also, adding a capital letter and an * symbol makes a password thousands of times more difficult for hackers to figure out!

  Of course, if you think I’m going to help you STEAL passwords, think again! Oh wait, this IS a book about spying, isn’t it? Maybe you should know these strategies so you can protect yourself from password theft! Fair enough.

  Password Theft

  One of the best ways to snag someone’s password is to just look while a person logs on to his computer.

  I’m kidding—and I’m not. Try to find innocent reasons to loiter around a person’s computer when they log on for the day. The key is that the first number of times you do this, you make it clear that you’re not looking at what the person is doing. But over time, you’ll be able to sneak a peek at the keystrokes of the password. Just try to get one keystroke (“p”!), and then make a note of it. Skip a day, then try to get another keystroke to their password on your next try!

  Naturally, you’re not going to learn the whole password quickly. This could take years! Maybe even weeks. But with patience, you’ll get there. Agents call this the “Elephant Technique” because it requires patience. (Its name is taken from an old joke.[2])

  Hot Tip!

  To protect yourself from just this sort of thing, try to have a password that takes two hands to type. (It’s harder for spies to track all ten fingers.) And if anyone makes a point of hanging around while you’re logging on, have your pet elephant step on them.

  Hacking, Computer Espionage, and Cyber-War

  You know what? The Elephant Technique sounds like a ton of work. Maybe you should just hire a hacker instead! Because when it comes to computer espionage, there are millions of professional hackers out there, trying to sneak into computers all over the planet. These hackers aren’t just trying to sneak onto Facebook pages. Each day, the average U.S. military officer working in the Pentagon can get up to 5,000 hack attempts on his computer. And military networks get probed hundreds of thousands of times daily!

  What can happen if the enemy hackers succeed? Let me tell you a little story:

  In 2007, Israel’s leaders were suspicious of a secret nuclear plant that its enemy, Syria, was building. But Israel’s military couldn’t just fly jets in and bomb the plant. After all, Syria has really good radar and an air defense that could shoot down any attacking jets.

  Instead, Israeli hackers took over the computers that ran Syria’s air defenses. The hackers programmed the air defense computers to show that everything was normal and just fine. And then, Israel just flew its jets in and blew up the nuclear plant!

  What a fun story! Now, enjoy reading about some of the different goals that high-tech hackers use.

  Cyber-Espionage: Sneaking on to a computer to STEAL information.

  Example: In 2007, a series of computer attacks on U.S. government agencies resulted in the loss of 10 to 20 terabytes of data. That’s more data than is stored in every library in whatever city you live in! (Experts think the attack came from China.)

  Cyber-Sabotage: Trying to sneak into a computer or server to DESTROY its contents.

  Example: In 2008, a troublemaker sprinkled a bunch of thumb drives around the parking lot of a U.S. military base in Tampa, Florida. Naturally, somebody got curious and picked up one of the thumb drives. “Gee, I wonder why these are here?”

  Then that person went to a computer on the military base and stuck the thumb drive into a computer. (“Guess I’ll find out!”) And then the thumb drive infected thousands of military computers with a malicious (mean and evil) software that screwed up everything! “Oops!”

  Cyber-Zombies: Hacker-spies can take over a group of computers, combine them into a network, and then command them to send out viruses or commit other mischief. The infected computers are called “zombie computers.” Their network is a “robot network” or “botnet.”

  Example: North American security experts recently exposed a huge computer espionage group in China. The group was nicknamed “The Shadow Network.” During their observations, the experts watched in amazement as Chinese hackers infected computers in over a hundred different countries and turned them into a global network of botnets.

  These zombie computers were controlled remotely and made to report to servers in China. Among other things, the botnets snuck into the MOST top secret computers of India’s government, where they stole reports on Indian missile systems and learned military secrets about India’s allies, including the United States.

  Cyber-Warfare: When two nations go to war in the 21st century, the first thing that happens is their computers start attacking each other. Because, while it takes time to launch jets and fire missiles, a computer attack can happen at the speed of light!

  Example: In 2009, the nations of Georgia and Russia went to war. Before the tanks started to roll, Georgia’s government computers were attacked. Hackers shut down Georgia’s media, banking, and government computers. What kind of hackers? Russian hackers!

  What the Russians did is called a “DDoS” (Distributed Denial of Service). That’s what happens when an enemy sends millions of “fake” visitors to a website, causing it to crash. This can be a pretty big deal if it’s a government website that is crucial for communications!

  Cyber-Warriors Rule

  Because of this new type of cyber-hacking, the U.S. military created a whole new branch of defense called the Cyber Command (a.k.a. CYBERCOM). Agents wor
king there call themselves “cyber-warriors,” which we can all agree is the coolest job title ever. (It’s much better than “hacker.”)

  What do U.S. cyber-warriors worry about? China! Most experts think that China has more cyber-warriors than any other country. Heck, there is even a Chinese university that teaches courses like “network attack technology”! Another thing the Chinese government does is look for kids who have been caught hacking. Then it hires the hackers!

  My name is Bond...but what should my screen name be?

  In 2010, British intelligence agents faced their greatest foe ever. Sure, they had spied against Muslim terrorists and Russian meanies. But this time, they were up against a tougher foe: computers!

  In order to improve computer skills among staff, the British Security Service began firing older agents and hiring younger people with technology backgrounds.

  So has the “James Bond generation” of rickety spies been retired because they can’t log on to Twitter?

  Yes!

  In China, the government controls all computer networks. So when a Chinese official says, “The Chinese government considers hacking as a cancer to the whole society,” you just have to smile! That is, unless you work for Google. You see, in 2010, Google pulled all operations out of China because it got tired of hackers constantly trying to sneak into its computer systems. These were almost certainly government-sponsored attacks. One clue was that the hackers were very interested in any people working for human rights in China.

  Oh, wait! I haven’t told you of the greatest cyber-outrage against humanity ever! Last year, a three-year-old boy armed with a jar of peanut butter smeared goo over my laptop’s keyboard. While I cannot prove anything, I suspect Chinese involvement.

  Fun Fact

  When John McCain and Barack Obama ran for the U.S. presidency, both of their campaign headquarters were hacked into from computers in China.

  One more thing. To keep on the cutting edge, the United States began a competition called the Cyber Challenge. It’s a national talent search for high school cyber-warriors. Young hackers compete against each other in cyber-competitions. The 2009 Cyber Challenge was won by a 17-year-old named Michael Coppola. To win, he hacked into the main Cyber Challenge computer and added points to his own score!

  Was that cheating? Oh, please! The judges loved it. As Michael said, “It’s cheating, but it’s like the entire game is cheating.” (Something tells me he’ll make a good cyber-warrior!)

  Wikipedia Is for Amateurs

  Do spies ever use Wikipedia? Sort of. American intelligence professionals have their own version of it called Intellipedia. It’s a place for U.S. agents, spymasters, and experts to create and edit intelligence entries. But what if you’re a CIA agent who’s working on a project, and you’d like to ask for help from other agencies? Luckily, there’s MySpace—or the spy version of it, which is known as A-Space. That’s where a CIA agent in Virginia can get help from an NSA agent in Seattle!

  Hey, imagine that you could track all of the phone calls, emails, Twitter feeds, IMs (instant messages, for those of you who are suffering abbreviation overload), and text messages in the world. Impossible? Not really! You see, there are billions of these messages every day, and they contain an untold wealth of intelligence.

  That’s where the tip-top secret Project ECHELON comes in. This program is so secret, most governments won’t even talk about it. It is rumored to use a network of supercomputers to go through all of the world’s electronic communications looking for important details.

  Ooh, that means something like this could happen:

  Enemy Spy (is hanging with his buds)

  Project ECHELON: Are you in an apartment?

  ES: Uh, maybe.

  PE: Is the apartment in Berlin?

  ES: Not even close.

  PE: We located your laptop’s signal there an hour ago.

  ES: Eep!

  PE: Why don’t we come over and hang out with you! We have a lot to talk about.

  ES: (goes off-line)

  * * *

  [2] Q. How do you eat a whole elephant? A. One bite at a time.

  Secret Agent Tool Kits & Self-Defense!

  Hey, you’re still here? Just hang on a second while I put my Swiss Army knife down. I have to be careful with it, because this isn’t just ANY pocketknife. What makes it special is that in addition to the usual attachments (retractable ballpoint pen, wrench, flashlight), it has a memory chip (flash drive) that self-destructs if anyone tampers with it. (Really!)

  The pocketknife also has a fingerprint identifier with a heat sensor. That means the memory chip will only work if my finger is still attached to my body. If an enemy agent were to cut off my finger and try to use it to access my memory chip, the memory chip would self-destruct!

  Of course, if someone cut my finger off, I probably wouldn’t be that worried about my memory chip.[3]

  Anyway, this chapter is about the things a spy should keep in his or her toolkit. One thing a spy shouldn’t have in there is a joke book. Spies do not joke around! That’s because they are often in tense situations that aren’t very funny.

  Worse, spies often have to work in tense nations that aren’t very funny. You know, the kind of countries that have traditions of mean dictators, ruthless police officers, and really bad television shows.

  These are the type of countries that might have jokes like this one from Russia. It’s a joke about people who tell jokes:

  “There are people who TELL jokes. Then there are people who COLLECT jokes. And finally, there are people who COLLECT the people who TELL jokes.”

  Heheh...ouch.

  Now picture this real-life situation:

  A Russian agent enters a Moscow movie theater. The theater is showing the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster. As the film starts, the Russian puts on the coolest spy gadget that’s ever been created—night-vision goggles!

  As the agent looks around, it’s pretty clear he isn’t interested in watching the movie. Nope, he’s trying to catch a pirate.

  Ah-ha! Our agent’s night vision reveals that someone is taping the blockbuster—in other words, a criminal is making a movie of the movie! This is known as a “pirated” copy, and while it might make a LOT of money for the movie pirates, it will also cost the movie studio millions of dollars in lost sales.

  Our agent is going to bust the pirate. And in this case, the movie being pirated was one of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. You see, Disney hired a private spy agency to take care of just this sort of problem. (This particular agency is run by retired Russian intelligence officers and policemen.) So the agent caught a pirate making a pirated version of a pirate movie!

  I told you night-vision goggles are the best! Hey, speaking of films, based on my experience watching spy movies, the coolest gadgets get invented when someone says, “This is a crazy idea, but it just might work.” And it turns out there’s a U.S. government agency devoted to exactly that kind of approach. It’s known as...

  The Department of Mad Scientists!

  Okay, the department’s official name is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but its nickname is more accurate. After all, according to DARPA’s director, the people working there are an “elite army of futuristic techno geeks.” That’s because DARPA is constantly looking for scientists and researchers doing things so crazy that nobody else will believe in them. When DARPA was originally created, its mission was to prevent the United States from ever being “surprised” by a cool invention that another country was working on. The way DARPA avoids being surprised is by inventing surprises of its own!

  What kinds of surprises? Well, most of them are secret, but here are a few things the Mad Scientists have invented:

  the computer mouse

  GPS systems for navigation

  “stealth” jets that radar can’t detect

  language translators

  cars that drive themselves in traffic

  artificial limbs that look and ac
t like real ones

  You’ve definitely heard of another one of DARPA’s inventions: the Internet! You knew the Mad Scientists invented the World Wide Web, right? Yep, back in the 1970s, the “Net” was a project designed to help with military communication. And here’s the beauty of DARPA’s mad scientists: they share their inventions whenever they can. Whenever DARPA comes up with an invention that will help society, they give it away. So, we ALL get to use the Internet. Thanks, DARPA!

  Before I share more information about gizmos and technology, I have to tell you about the Moscow Rules. These are rules that CIA agents came up with while working in Moscow, which used to be the hardest place in the world to do some good spying. One of the Moscow Rules is this: “Technology will always let you down.” [4]