6 Questions About The Huge CIA Blunder That Allowed Enemies To Kill 70 U.S. Spies

1. The transient communication system the CIA used with its foreign assets was compromised sometime around 2010 by Iranian intelligence, Yahoo reports, perhaps by using a double agent who showed the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence an initial site.
2. Reidy did not let the matter go, but in an extraordinary (although heavily redacted) appeal of the case he’d initially laid before the CIA to the newly created Intelligence Community Inspector General’s office, Reidy yet again detailed the problems he had identified, the assets he feared were blown and possibly killed, and the implications of both for future human intelligence source security.
3. More than 70 foreign nationals working as spies for the CIA in Iran and China were systematically identified and slaughtered in the past decade, due to a ridiculously weak web-based system the CIA used to communicate with foreign assets it couldn’t reach directly.
4. According to an earlier report by Dorfman, Iran later shared their methodology with other intelligence agencies, including the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
5. Although the Iranian roll-up occurred in 2011, and the Chinese rout occurred from 2010 to 2012, the CIA did not remedy the root cause of the problem in its transient messaging scheme until 2013, when Yahoo reports teams of co-opted staffers worked around the clock to dismantle the compromised system.
6. Based on at least one analysis, it looks like a simple internet search using the command “InURL” and other readily available search tools revealed to Iranian and Chinese intelligence agencies a network of interconnected web sites that ultimately led back to CIA official servers.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/07/6-questions-huge-cia-blunder-allowed-enemies-kill-70-u-s-spies/