thanks, snowden

Leaks Reveal Hundreds of Cyber Ops

Includes putting foreign computers under U.S. control.

The classified "black budget" disclosure by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, most of which were against top adversaries like North Korea and Iran. It includes a campaign that uses U.S. specialists to hack tens of thousands of foreign computer networks and surreptitiously put them under American control, with plans of expanding this into the millions. “The Department of Defense does engage” in computer network exploitation, an NSA spokesman wrote in an emailed response. “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”