Daily Archives: September 14, 2014

BERLIN: The US National Security Agency and British intelligence services are able to secretly access data from telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom and several other German operators, according to Der Spiegel weekly.

An NSA programme called "Treasure Map" gives the US agency and Britain's electronic eavesdropping GCHQ near real-time information about the operators' networks, right through to end users on computers, smartphones or tablets, Der Spiegel said in a report to appear in its Sunday edition.

It is the latest in a string of revelations based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Spiegel said the tracking programme, which it dubbed "the Google Earth of the Internet", can be used to plan cyber attacks.

The magazine said it did not receive any immediate comment from the NSA or GCHQ in response to the claims.

Satellite ground station operator Stellar, which according to Spiegel was among the German firms targeted, responded angrily to the revelation.

"A cyber attack of this kind clearly violates German law," said Stellar boss Christian Steffen, after Spiegel presented it with a GCHQ document said to contain the passwords of some of its clients.

In response to the Spiegel report, Deutsche Telekom and regional operator Netcologne said they had not identified any data breaches.

But Deutsche Telekom's IT security head Thomas Tschersich said: "The access of foreign secret services to our network would be totally unacceptable."

"We are looking into any indication of a possible manipulation. We have also alerted the authorities," he told the weekly.

See the rest here:
NSA, British spy agency have secret access to Deutsche Telekom: Report

In the latest efforts toward warding off foreign hackers, the head of Microsoft Germany is planning to develop Cloud technology that would be offered only within Germany.

Microsoft's current computing centers in the Netherlands and Ireland are becoming more popular with the company's biggest clients, Microsoft Germany head Christian Illek told the German daily Tagesspiegel on Sunday.

"But this is obviously not enough for medium-sized German companies," Illek said.

Cloud computing refers to a storage system, which allows computing devices to share their data within a defined network online. This includes software, firewalls and platforms, as well as memory and technical services.

Considering that the expansion of computer networks has increased security risks for companies, Microsoft Germany wants data to be kept within Germany's own borders and hosted by a data center, which would be subject to German or European law, Illek emphasized.

"The data managementwould be [hosted] by a German partner," he said.

The head of Hewlett-Packard (HP) Germany, Heiko Meyer, had a similar message on Sunday, in which he called for a common Cloud space for Europe, similar to the concept of the EU's economic area.

Meyer told news agency DPA that HP had already submitted plans for "Cloud 28+" to the EU research program Horizon 2020, which is aimed at streamlining European research and innovation to make the 28-member bloc more competitive globally.

The ex-head of German telecommunications Telekom, Ren Obermann, made a similar proposal last year.

Spiegel: 'NSA has access to Telekom'

Go here to read the rest:
While NSA 'maps' the Internet landscape, German tech companies want Cloud cover