Summary of Ben Buchanan's The Hacker and the State

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The 2010 UN Security Council vote on Iran sanctions was close, and the NSA was able to help secure the vote by spying on the internal communications of some of the Security Council members.

#2 The United States and its allies have a home-field advantage when it comes to cyber operations. They are well-positioned along the key hubs and cables that connect the globe, and they use this to their advantage to spy on other countries.

#3 The most valuable collection points in the world are the ones where the best intelligence flows. The globe’s telegraph and phone networks required a lot of capital to construct, and their main hubs are in the richest and most economically interdependent states.

#4 The Five Eyes alliance is made up of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They share a common language and democratic heritage, but they also share a favorable location along the coasts of the world’s major oceans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669387855

IRB Media

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Insights on Ben Buchanan's The Hacker and the State

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The 2010 UN Security Council vote on Iran sanctions was close, and the NSA was able to help secure the vote by spying on the internal communications of some of the Security Council members.

#2

The United States and its allies have a home-field advantage when it comes to cyber operations. They are well-positioned along the key hubs and cables that connect the globe, and they use this to their advantage to spy on other countries.

#3

The most valuable collection points in the world are the ones where the best intelligence flows. The globe’s telegraph and phone networks required a lot of capital to construct, and their main hubs are in the richest and most economically interdependent states.

#4

The Five Eyes alliance is made up of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They share a common language and democratic heritage, but they also share a favorable location along the coasts of the world’s major oceans.

#5

The NSA’s Special Source Operations division is in charge of collecting information from the massive amounts of information that flow through 33 Thomas Street’s cables and antennas.

#6

The NSA has used ATT’s network to gather data on foreign governments and companies, as well as passive collection on the company’s networks. This means they will collect data that passes through the United States but does not originate or terminate there.

#7

The Five Eyes can watch the modern world pass by them via the vast amounts of communications that they collect from around the world. Passive collection has its limits, however, and the unpredictability of internet routing sometimes causes communications to take an unexpected or obscure path.

#8

The modern system created by American technology companies creates an intelligence opportunity for the NSA. Some of the users of these platforms are foreign individuals of great interest to the NSA, since they may be foreign intelligence targets.

#9

PRISM is a system that the NSA uses to surveil email and IP addresses. It supplements, but does not replace, passive collection from fiber-optic cables and telecommunications sites. It gives the NSA a valuable second chance at gathering sensitive data.

#10

The death of Costas Tsalikidis marked the end of a career as a network-management expert at the phone company