Nation State Actors

When I hear people say they want to be "off the grid," I find it's generally in the context of wanting to avoid the government. It's good to not draw unwanted attention, especially from them, but some of the people I've talked to over the years have an impression they can hide their day-to-day activities from "men in black." What I cover in on this page may be interpreted as defeatist, which it's not - rather it's an objective look at what an agency like the FBI is capable of. If someone does something dumb enough to warrant attention from the government, the Eye of Sauron will find them anywhere.

Years ago when Edward Snowden revealed what was going on inside the NSA, much of the American population seemed surprised and outraged about the revelations. Many people already knew this type of activity was going on and were labeled as conspiracy theorists who spent too much time in dark corners of the internet when they discussed it. Now it seems to be common knowledge that people know the government spies on the populace. The Snowden leaks revealed how capable intelligence agencies were and the enormous amounts of data they could access.

If you haven't yet heard of Five Eyes, you now have a new rabbit hole you can jump into. This is a partnership of intelligence agencies and data sharing between the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. There are also the Nine Eyes and Fourteen Eyes, with slightly different arrangements, but are still connections between intelligence agencies in different countries. These are some of the most well resourced agencies in the world and they hire some of the best talent. If you'd like to learn more about how the NSA started and what they could do during the 40's through the early 80's, The Puzzle Palace is a great book.

If you want to research some older examples of technical spy work, the Great Seal Bug and TEMPEST are two interesting pieces.

The Great Seal Bug was a Soviet Union gift to a US ambassador in 1945 and it wasn’t discovered to be a bug until 1951. It used a radio signal to activate the device and the bug itself didn’t have a power supply. It was finally discovered by a British radio operator who heard Americans talking on a Soviet Air Force radio channel as they beamed radio waves to the ambassador's office. There’s a lot more detail to how this worked, so feel free to Google it if you want.

TEMPEST was used by the NSA and allowed eavesdropping of an LCD or CRT monitor by using electromagnetic emissions. Something like this would allow an operative to be some distance away from you and see everything on your computer screen. This is an instance where having an air gapped computer wouldn’t do any good.

Let's go back to the original statement I made about why trying to hide from them is a waste of effort. Many of the people who work at these places have made it their careers and it's what they eat, sleep, and breathe. They are responsible for infiltrating corporate and government networks, disrupting networks, influencing people through disinformation campaigns, and spying on officials to name a few of their activities.

Take the above photos as an example. This was a leak from over a decade ago of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group. In this specific instance, the TAO would intercept shipments of Cisco hardware and tamper with it, then send it back on its way to the destination. The receiver would be none the wiser and now the NSA would have full access to their networks. These photos were taken around 2010. Combined with the Snowden leaks from around that time, this gave people an idea of what the intel agencies were up to. Consider how fast technology has progressed and how the government always gets the best hardware. Whatever they have now is way beyond any of the techniques from the leaks.

An example from the software front is EternalBlue, which was kept in the NSA’s back pocket. It was a vulnerability in Windows and was around for several years before Microsoft found out about it and fixed it. The vulnerability was used in the NotPetya and WannaCry ransomware attacks, which turned out to be a disaster for parts of the world. The Ukrainian power grid and the shipping company, Maersk, were devastated by this and it caused logistics issues for some parts of the world. If you want to read more about this attack, Sandworm is a great book to check out. This vulnerability was also a great example of how even with proper security on a network and operating system, things can still go wrong. Nothing is ever 100% secure.

As far as avoiding their attention, the best way to do this is to be a "gray man." Blend in with your environment and don't draw unwanted attention. Let us use an analogy. You could be in a crowd of 1,000 other people. If they all have blue jackets and you are wearing a red jacket, you draw attention to yourself. Even if you have a "face cover," you won't be able to hide yourself from a nation state. This will look different depending on the country you're in. If you're lucky enough to be in part of the free world, it's a matter of not being stupid. What gets people in trouble is when they yell online about how they hate the government and want to change things in a less than peaceful way. Whether or not you think this, it's reckless to say those kind of statements in public. If you're an American citizen and draw attention from the FBI, the ramifications may be minor and could just involve everything you do being closely monitored for a few years. If you're in a hostile country and make a bad move, it could result in your death.

Something of particular importance these days - it seems people are taking more of an active interest in political topics. If a government sees certain ideologies as problematic, people with those viewpoints will get more scrutiny. If you ever associate yourself with a group who your government views as high risk, or you work in a high risk profession such as journalism or AI research, you will be actively monitored. If you choose to go through with these decisions, you need to adopt a higher threat model and protect yourself as best as you can.

Beyond that, you should still try to protect your communications. Just because they have the capabilities to spy is no reason to throw hands up in defeat. Right after the Snowden leaks came out, the EFF made a browser extension called HTTPS Everywhere, which was a good step forward in online security. HTTPS wasn't commonplace at the time, but through a lot of hard work and awareness, things similar to it were brought to light and people behind the scenes put in a lot of work to make the internet more secure. Basic security practices are important and go a long way. Follow other sections of this site to harden your OS, use 2FA, etc.

If you do any foreign travel, it's critical you read the travel OPSEC section! Not having your bases covered properly could get your devices seized and you could be imprisoned!