{"id":280,"date":"2015-11-18T18:36:15","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T18:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/?p=280"},"modified":"2015-11-18T21:14:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T21:14:51","slug":"nsa-taps-into-venezuelas-state-oil-company-with-help-from-us-embassy-snowden-leak-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/2015\/11\/18\/nsa-taps-into-venezuelas-state-oil-company-with-help-from-us-embassy-snowden-leak-reveals\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Taps into Venezuela’s State Oil Company with Help from US Embassy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from TeleSUR<\/a><\/em>
\nNov. 18, 2015<\/p>\n


\nU.S. intelligence agents posing as diplomats in Caracas helped an NSA analyst try to crack open PDVSA\u2019s computer network.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. National Security Agency accessed the internal communications of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela and acquired sensitive data it planned to exploit in order to spy on the company\u2019s top officials, according to a highly classified NSA document that reveals the operation was carried out in concert with the U.S. embassy in Caracas.<\/p>\n

The March 2011 document, labeled, \u201ctop secret,\u201d and provided by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, is being reported on in an exclusive partnership between teleSUR and The Intercept.<\/p>\n

Drafted by an NSA signals development analyst, the document explains that PDVSA\u2019s network, already compromised by U.S. intelligence, was further infiltrated after an NSA review in late 2010 \u201cshowed telltale signs that things were getting stagnant on the Venezuelan Energy target set.\u201d Most intelligence \u201cwas coming from warranted collection,\u201d which likely refers to communications that were intercepted as they passed across U.S. soil. According to the analyst, \u201cwhat little was coming from other collectors,\u201d or warrantless surveillance, \u201cwas pretty sparse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond efforts to infiltrate Venezuela\u2019s most important company, the leaked NSA document highlights the existence of a secretive joint operation between the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency operating out of the U.S. embassy in Caracas. A fortress-like building just a few kilometers from PDVSA headquarters, the embassy sits on the top of a hill that gives those inside a commanding view of the Venezuelan capital.<\/p>\n

Last year, Der Spiegel published top-secret documents detailing the state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that the NSA and CIA deploy to embassies around the world. That intelligence on PDVSA had grown \u201cstagnant\u201d was concerning to the U.S. intelligence community for a number of reasons, which its powerful surveillance capabilities could help address.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela has some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world,\u201d the NSA document states, with revenue from oil and gas accounting \u201cfor roughly one third of GDP\u201d and \u201cmore than half of all government revenues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo understand PDVSA,\u201d the NSA analyst explains, \u201cis to understand the economic heart of Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the analyst reported. \u201cPlainly speaking,\u201d the analyst writes, they \u201cwanted PDVSA information at the highest possible levels of the corporation \u2013 namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given a task, the analyst got to work and, with the help of \u201csheer luck,\u201d found his task easier than expected.<\/p>\n

It began simply enough: with a visit to PDVSA\u2019s website, \u201cwhere I clicked on ‘Leadership’ and wrote down the names of the principals who would become my target list.\u201d From there, the analyst \u201cdumped the names\u201d into PINWALE, the NSA\u2019s primary database of previously intercepted digital communications, automatically culled using a dictionary of search terms called \u201cselectors.\u201d It was an almost immediate success.<\/p>\n

In addition to email traffic, the analyst came across over 10,000 employee contact profiles full of email addresses, phone numbers, and other useful targeting information, including the usernames and passwords for over 900 PDVSA employees. One profile the analyst found was for Rafael Ramirez, PDVSA’s president from 2004 to 2014 and Venezuela’s current envoy to the United Nations. A similar entry turned up for Luis Vierma, the company\u2019s former vice president of exploration and production.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, even my old eyes could see that these things were a goldmine,\u201d the analyst wrote. The entries were full of \u201cwork, home, and cell phones, email addresses, LOTS!\u201d This type of information, referred to internally as \u201cselectors,\u201d can then be \u201ctasked\u201d across the NSA\u2019s wide array of surveillance tools so that any relevant communications will be saved.<\/p>\n

According to the analyst, the man to whom he reported \u201cwas thrilled!\u201d But \u201cit is what happened next that really made our day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I was analyzing the metadata,\u201d the analyst explains, \u201cI clicked on the ‘From IP’ and noticed something peculiar,\u201d all of the employee profile, \u201cover 10,000 of them, came from the same IP!!!\u201d That, the analyst determined, meant \u201cI had been looking at internal PDVSA comms all this time!!! I fired off a few emails to F6 here and in Caracas, and they confirmed it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMetadata\u201d is a broad term that can include the phone numbers a target has dialed, the duration of the call and from where it was placed, as well as the Wi-Fi networks used to access the Internet, the websites visited and the times accessed. That information can then be used to identify the user.<\/p>\n

F6 is the NSA code name for a joint operation with the CIA known as the Special Collection Service, based in Beltsville, Maryland \u2013 and with agents posing as diplomats in dozens of U.S. embassies around the world, including Caracas, Bogota and Brasilia.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Der Spiegel reported that it was this unit of the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy that had installed, within the U.S. embassy in Berlin, \u201csophisticated listening devices with which they can intercept virtually every popular method of communication: cellular signals, wireless networks and satellite communication.\u201d The article suggested this is likely how the U.S. tapped into German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone.<\/p>\n

SCS at the U.S. embassy in Caracas played an active role throughout the espionage activities described in the NSA document. \u201cI have been coordinating with Caracas,\u201d the NSA analyst states, \u201cwho have been surveying their environment and sticking the results into XKEYSCORE.\u201d<\/p>\n

XKEYSCORE, as reported by The Intercept, processes a continuous \u201cflow of Internet traffic from fiber optic cables that make up the backbone of the world’s communication network,\u201d storing the data for 72 hours on a \u201crolling buffer\u201d and \u201csweep[ing] up countless people’s Internet searches, emails, documents, usernames and passwords.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NSA\u2019s combined databases are, essentially, \u201ca very ugly version of Google with half the world\u2019s information in it,\u201d explained Matthew Green, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, in an email. \u201cThey\u2019re capturing so much information from their cable taps, that even the NSA analysts don\u2019t know what they\u2019ve got,\u201d he added, \u201can analyst has to occasionally step in and manually dig through the data\u201d to see if the information they want has already been collected.<\/p>\n

That is exactly what the NSA analyst did in the case of PDVSA, which turned up even more leads to expand their collection efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been lucky enough to find several juicy pdf documents in there,\u201d the NSA analyst wrote, \u201cone of which has just been made a report.\u201d<\/p>\n

That report, dated January 2011, suggests a familiarity with the finances of PDVSA beyond that which was public knowledge, noting a decline in the theft and loss of oil.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, I have discovered a string that carries user ID’s and their passwords, and have recovered over 900 unique user\/password combinations\u201d the analyst wrote, which he forwarded to the NSA\u2019s elite hacking team, Targeted Access Operations, along with other useful information and a \u201ctargeting request to see if we can pwn this network and especially, the boxes of PDVSA’s leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPwn,\u201d in this context, means to successfully hack and gain full access to a computer or network. \u201cPwning\u201d a computer, or \u201cbox,\u201d would allow the hacker to monitor a user\u2019s every keystroke.<\/p>\n

A History of US Interest in Venezuelan Affairs<\/strong><\/p>\n

PDVSA has long been a target of U.S. intelligence agencies and the subject of intense scrutiny from U.S. diplomats. A February 17, 2009, cable, sent from the U.S. ambassador in Caracas to Washington and obtained by WikiLeaks, shows that PDVSA employees, were probed during visa interviews about their company’s internal operations. The embassy was particularly interested in the PDVSA\u2019s strategy concerning litigation over Venezuela’s 2007 nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project \u2013 and billions of dollars in assets owned by U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to a PDVSA employee interviewed following his visa renewal, PDVSA is aggressively preparing its international arbitration case against ExxonMobil,\u201d the cable notes.<\/p>\n

A year before, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that the U.S. government \u201cfully support the efforts of ExxonMobil to get a just and fair compensation package for their assets.\u201d But, he added, \u201cWe are not involved in that dispute.\u201d<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil is also at the center of a border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela. In May 2015, the company announced it had made a \u201csignificant oil discovery\u201d in an offshore location claimed by both countries. The U.S. ambassador to Guyana has offered support for that country\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n

More recently, the U.S. government has begun leaking information to media about allegations against top Venezuelan officials.<\/p>\n

In October, The Wall Street Journal reported in a piece, \u201cU.S. Investigates Venezuelan Oil Giant,\u201d that \u201cagents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies\u201d had recently met to discuss \u201cvarious PDVSA-related probes.\u201d The \u201cwide-ranging investigations\u201d reportedly have to do with whether former PDVSA President Rafael Ramirez and other executives accepted bribes.<\/p>\n

Leaked news of the investigations came less than two months before Dec. 9 parliamentary elections in Venezuela. Ramirez, for his part, has rejected the accusations, which he claims are part of a \u201cnew campaign that wants to claim from us the recovery and revolutionary transformation of PDVSA.\u201d Thanks to Chavez, he added, Venezuela\u2019s oil belongs to \u201cthe people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its piece on the accusations against him, The Wall Street Journal notes that during Ramirez\u2019s time in office PDVSA became \u201can arm of the late President Hugo Chavez\u2019s socialist revolution,\u201d with money made from the sale of petroleum used \u201cto pay for housing, appliances and food for the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former PDVSA president is not the only Venezuelan official to be accused of corruption by the U.S. government. In May 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Diosdado Cabello, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, of being involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering. Former Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami, the former director of military intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, and Nestor Reverol, head of the National Guard, have also faced similar accusations from the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

None of these accusations against high-ranking Venezuelan officials has led to any indictments.<\/p>\n

The timing of the charges, made in the court of public opinion rather than a courthouse, has led some to believe there\u2019s another motive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people despise us,\u201d Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said in October. He and his supporters argue the goal of the U.S. government\u2019s selective leaks is to undermine his party ahead of the upcoming elections, helping install a right-wing opposition seen as friendlier to U.S. interests. \u201cThey believe that we belong to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loose Standards for NSA Intelligence Sharing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ulterior motives or not, by the NSA\u2019s own admission the intelligence it gathers on foreign targets may be disseminated widely among U.S. officials who may have more than justice on their minds.<\/p>\n

According to a guide issued by the NSA on January 12, 2015, the communications of non-U.S. persons may be captured in bulk and retained if they are said to contain information concerning a plot against the United States or evidence of, \u201cTransnational criminal threats, including illicit finance and sanctions evasion.\u201d Any intelligence that is gathered may then be passed on to other agencies, such as the DEA, if it \u201cis related to a crime that has been, is being, or is about to be committed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spying for the sole purpose of protecting the interests of a corporation is ostensibly not allowed, though there are exceptions that do allow for what might be termed economic espionage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collection of foreign private commercial information or trade secrets is authorized only to protect nation the national security of the United States or its partners and allies,\u201d the agency states. It is not supposed to collect such information \u201cto afford a competitive advantage to U.S. companies and U.S. business sectors commercially.\u201d However, \u201cCertain economic purposes, such as identifying trade or sanctions violations or government influence or direction, shall not constitute competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

In May 2011, two months after the leaked document was published in NSA\u2019s internal newsletter, the U.S. State Department announced it was imposing sanctions on PDVSA \u2013 a state-owned enterprise, or one that could be said to be subject to \u201cgovernment influence or direction\u201d \u2013 for business it conducted with the Islamic Republic of Iran between December 2010 and March 2011. The department did not say how it obtained information about the transactions, allegedly worth US$50 million.<\/p>\n

Intelligence gathered with one stated purpose can also serve another, and the NSA\u2019s already liberal rules on the sharing of what it gathers can also be bent in times of perceived emergency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, due to unanticipated or extraordinary circumstances, NSA determines that it must take action in apparent departure from these procedures to protect the national security of the United States, such action may be taken\u201d \u2013 after either consulting other branches of the intelligence bureaucracy. \u201cIf there is insufficient time for approval,\u201d however, it may unilaterally take action.<\/p>\n

Beyond the obvious importance of oil, leaked diplomatic cables show PDVSA was also on the U.S. radar because of its importance to Venezuela\u2019s left-wing government. In 2009, another diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks shows the U.S. embassy in Caracas viewed PDVSA as crucial to the political operations of long-time foe and former President Hugo Chavez. In April 2002, Chavez was briefly overthrown in a coup that, according to The New York Times, as many as 200 officials in the George W. Bush administration \u2013 briefed by the CIA \u2013 knew about days before it was carried out.<\/p>\n

The Venezuelan government was not informed of the plot.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the December 2002-February 2003 oil sector strike, PDVSA has put itself at the service of President Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution, funding everything from domestic programs to Chavez’s geopolitical endeavors,\u201d the 2009 cable states.<\/p>\n

Why might that be a problem, from the U.S. government’s perspective? Another missive from the U.S. embassy in Caracas, this one sent in 2010, sheds some light: Chavez \u201cappears determined to shape the hemisphere according to his vision of ‘socialism in the 21st century,’\u201d it states, \u201ca vision that is almost the mirror image of what the United States seeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a time when not so long ago when the U.S. had an ally in Venezuela, one that shared its vision for the hemisphere \u2013 and invited a U.S. firm run by former U.S. intelligence officials to directly administer its information technology operations.<\/p>\n

Amid a push for privatization under former Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera, in January 1997 PDVSA decided to outsource its IT system to a joint a company called Information, Business and Technology, or INTESA \u2013 the product of a joint venture between the oil company, which owned a 40 percent share of the new corporation, and the major U.S.-based defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, which controlled 60 percent.<\/p>\n

SAIC has close, long-standing ties to the U.S. intelligence community. At the time of its dealings with Venezuela, the company\u2019s director was retired Admiral Bobby Inman. Before coming to SAIC, Inman served as the U.S. Director of Naval Intelligence and Vice Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. Inman also served as deputy director of the CIA and, from 1977 to 1981, as director of the NSA.<\/p>\n

In his book, \u201cChanging Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government,\u201d author Gregory Wilpert notes that Inman was far from the only former intelligence official working for SAIC in a leadership role. Joining him were two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense, William Perry and Melvin Laird, a former director of the CIA, John Deutsch, and a former head of both the CIA and the Defense Department, Robert Gates. The company that those men controlled, INTESA, was given the job of managing \u201call of PDVSA\u2019s data processing needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2002, Venezuela, now led by a government seeking to roll back the privatizations of its predecessor, chose not to renew SAIC\u2019s contract for another five years, a decision the company protested to the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which insures the overseas investments of U.S. corporations. In 2004, the U.S. agency ruled that by canceling its contract with SAIC the Venezuelan government had \u201cexpropriated\u201d the company\u2019s investment.<\/p>\n

However, before that ruling, and before its operations were reincorporated by PDVSA, the company that SAIC controlled, INTESA, played a key role in an opposition-led strike aimed at shutting down the Venezuelan oil industry. In December 2002, eight months after the failed coup attempt and the same month its contract was set to expire, INTESA, the Venezuelan Ministry of Communication and Information alleges, \u201cexercised its ability to control our computers by paralyzing the charge, discharge, and storage of crude at different terminals within the national grid.\u201d The government alleges INTESA, which possessed the codes needed to access those terminals, refused to allow non-striking PDVSA employees access to the company\u2019s control systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result,\u201d Wilpert noted, \u201cwas that PDVSA could not transfer its data processing to new systems, nor could it process its orders for invoices for oil shipments. PDVSA ended up having to process such things manually because passwords and the general computing infrastructure were unavailable, causing the strike to be much more damaging to the company than it would have been if the data processing had been in PDVSA\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

PDVSA\u2019s IT operations would become a strictly internal affair soon thereafter, though one never truly free from the prying eyes of hostile outsiders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Snowden revelation: The U.S. National Security Agency accessed the internal communications of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela and acquired sensitive data it planned to exploit in order to spy on the company\u2019s top officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuba-venezuela.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}