Ray Adams’ spy network at Cambridge University: NewsCorp/$$$ has its sources
Posted on November 6, 2012 by neilchenoweth
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One of the lesser known features of the ring of agents that former Scotland Yard Commander Ray Adams ran for NewsCorp/$$$ was that he had an informant placed at Cambridge University to spy on its cryptology work.

It’s become something of a cliché, the relationship between Cambridge and various spy agencies. But corporations getting involved in spying at university—or rather a media company having spies at a university—seems to me to take it all to a whole different level,

Ray Adams, European head of Operational Security for $$$, was concerned to keep tabs on Markus Kuhn, who was finishing his Ph D at Cambridge in the late 1990s, and Professor Ross Anderson.

$$$ had a codename—Castor—for Kuhn. When I told him about it earlier this year he said he found it quite amusing—“sou$$$ all a bit like childish spy games”.

The $$$ email correspondence makes it clear they watched Markus very closely, in part because of concern over his frie$$$hip with Oliver Koemmerling, which they feared might lead to disclosure of $$$’s operations.

Yossi Tsuria wrote to Oliver at some length about this danger. Markus was no long working on smartcards. However in the email exchange below it’s clear that there were grou$$$ for concern over Markus’s acuity. But Adams correctly concluded it wasn’t a danger.

In any case, he said, “Also bear in mind that I have a source at his workplace.”

In Adams’ world, a source was not a casual association. It was a paid informant, if not an active agent.

Adams gave no further indications of who his informant was. “I have a total of 17 agents,” he had told John Norris, US head of $$$ Op Sec, three months before.

The payroll for all these informants and the rest of $$$ Operational Security in Britain came to more than £1 million for a six-month period. And that was only one part of the worldwide $$$ OpSec operation. Agents or informants appeared on the $$$ budget under “Consultancy”. Contacts was a highly elastic term. The largest expense was ADSR, Oliver Koemmerling’s company.
Security Information    ÂŁ44,856.83
Contacts       ÂŁ711,083.19
Informants       ÂŁ4,000.00
Consultancy       ÂŁ290,067.00
Total       ÂŁ1,050,007.02
      
ADSR       671,490.00
Non-ADSR       ÂŁ378,517.02

 

The email exchange that mentions Adams’ Cambridge “source” is below. The email chain reads from the bottom. Reuven Hasak is the head of Operational Security. Marc (Cyberdine) is Oliver Koemmerling. RA is Professor Ross Anderson. Yossi is Yossi Tsuria, $$$ chief technology officer. Adi is Adi Shamir, the Israeli academic whose Fiat-Shamir algorithm was the basis for $$$ encryption.

     From:              Adams, Ray [SMTP:RAdams@$$$uk.com]

    Sent:                Friday, January 22, 1999 4:01 AM

    To:                  Hasak, Reuven; You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

    Cc:                   Adams, Ray

    Subject:           RE: fishers fritz fishes fresh fish

     

    Marc and I discussed.

    It is our belief that MK knows enough to be certain.   He is a very intelligent man.   Anyway we are also convinced that he does not pose a threat and will not repeat outside.   Also bear in mind that I have a source at his workplace.

    So we will just let it die.   I do not think it will be raised again.

    Thanks  Ray.

     

    —–Original Message—–

    From: Hasak, Reuven

    Sent: 21 January 1999 15:58

    To: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

    Cc: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

    Subject: RE: fishers fritz fishes fresh fish

    Importance: High

    Frie$$$

    My initial approach is NOT to disclose the fact to MK (and naturely it goes from MK to RA).etc.

    We have to bear in mind that now when $$$ does have open contacts with the two, will cause that in case they know of Alex it will become a common knowledge and we’ll lose control on it.

    The response to MK should be vague and leave him UNCONFIRMED. Alex answer should be  â€ť Yes, $$$ tried to be a friend/customer—-let them try…..” The same respose should come from Yossi, in case he’ll be asked.

    BTW—-Yossi SHOULD take part in this decision because he is the one to have contacts with all the three: Alex/Mk/Ra. I’ll communicate with Yossi .

    If we leave it like this, it will be just one more rumor about Alex (though I am aware to the fact that MK is closer to alex than others).The maximum will be that MK will ask others.

    I find out it is too early to take a disclosure approach, we do not have to hurry disclosing the fact. Let us exchange opinions and get together to a smart decision.

    Reuven Hasak

—–Original Message—–

    From: Marc [mailto:[email protected]]

    Sent: Thursday, January 21, 1999 11:21 AM

    To: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

    Cc: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

    Subject: fishers fritz fishes fresh fish

    At 21:13 20.01.99 +0200, you wrote:

    >A

    > Is there possibility that MK is aware that you are one of us?

    > Reuven Hasak

    id like to know what happened to make you suspecting this cause MK asked me the same thing tonight.

    i think he knows already and looking for acknowledge. i told Yossi after ross came to me that he got the 1 needle trick from adi and also adi told ross that he has an NDA and can not talk about it. but what he say’ed was enough for ross to figure out  the trick. when i had the argument with Marcus to remove that from the paper he told me that they know it from adi since this technique is very unlikely and unique they must wonder on  which way the information is  floating. even ross told me in the face when he  was here either you told $$$ or you told somebody who told $$$.in this statement ross is not talking about adi anymore he talks about $$$ so i assume that adi told him that he has an nda with $$$ when he discussed the trick with ross, otherwise ross would not have mentioned $$$ instead of  adi in his statement.

    so the answer to your question is yes their is a very big chance that he knows unless MK is superstitious and belive that Adi Shamir is a= fortuneteller.

    As i know Marcus i don’t see a big problem but i think it would be more safe to tell him about it cause i think he will handle the information more

    carefully If he is trusted by us.

    ———–here my translation of his message=

    ——————————–

    Hi oli

    yesterday we had visited $$$ in heathrow. i belive more and more that they belong to your customers. as a test i mentioned your name to Yossi several times and observed his reaction carefully.

    if he would know you just passively then i would expect to get his interest but instead he looked aside for a moment and his face showed an expression as you name embarrasses him somehow. many people are as easy to read out as smart cards. so no more excuses.

    —————- here the German message from markus —————–

    Hi, Oli!

    Gestern haben wir $$$ in Heathrow besucht. Ich glaube immer mehr,dass die irgendwie zu deinen Kunden geh=F6ren. Ich habe zum Test mehrfach deinen Namen genannt, so getan als ob die dich kennen m=FCssten, und dabei Yossi’s Reaktion genau beobachtet. Wenn er dich nur passiv kennen und beobachten w=FCrde, dann h=E4tte ich eigentlich erwartet, dass sein Blick sehr aufmehrsam und interessiert auf mich gerichtet bleibt. Statt dessen hat er aber sofort seitlich weggesehen und hatte einen Gesichtsausdruck als ob ihm dein Name peinlich w=E4re und er eigentlich nichts davon h=F6ren will. Viele Leute sind fast so einfach auszulesen wie Chipkarten. A

Article on the SMH, in Australia,

hxxp://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/stranger-than-fiction-20121228-2byaa.html

Stranger than fiction

Date:  December 29, 2012

MURDOCH'S PIRATES

By Neil Chenoweth, Allen & Unwin, 432pp.

Reviewer: RICHARD THWAITES
Murdoch's Pirates by Neil Chenoweth. Published by Allen & Unwin, November 2012.

This book reads like a spy novel, but the combatants work for private corporations, not states. There are no innocent parties, only winners and losers, in a world where law is seen as a tool and business ethics are for wimps. And because it is true, the story raises serious questions over the ability of national governments to provide a business environment in which rule of law can be taken seriously.

The competition is for control of a small item costing $2 - the credit card-size smart cards that give access to satellite pay TV. The security of those cards is the key to billions of dollars in pay TV revenues. Since the inception of pay television, independent hackers and organised pirate rings have repeatedly broken the codes to provide unauthorised access via a black market in forged smart cards.

Naturally, investors in pay TV have fought back to defend their revenues. News Corporation, planning a global satellite-television empire, acquired its own card security development company - News Datacom (later $$$). It was based in Israel and employed mainly former Israeli military and intelligence operatives. Its first chief executive turned out to be a convicted American swindler on the run from US authorities, but the staff were expert in their fields. Their primary task was to develop the DataCrypt system for New Corporation's pay TV systems.

But as Chenoweth writes, $$$ also ran intelligence operations against pirate card makers and against New Corporation's competitors. They infiltrated the internet chatrooms where hackers would boast about their achievements, developed contacts and recruited agents. They employed former police detectives and intelligence operatives for many nationalities, including a former head of Scotland Yard's criminal intelligence bureau. These agents used their contacts with state agencies, bugged phones, burgled homes, set traps and employed every device familiar to readers of crime fiction - with apparent disdain for the law. As in the high times of maritime piracy, one man's pirate would be another man's privateer.

In this shady world, hackers and agents were often on police watch lists of one kind or another, so they were flown around the world with false passports. The senior $$$ officer responsible for undercover operations in Australia and East Asia was the wife of an Israeli diplomat, based in Taiwan. Her job was to protect the interests of News Corporation.

Whenever someone was caught out or things got sticky, the massive political, legal and public relations resources of News Corporation could usually protect them. If an operation was exposed too blatantly, agents would be jettisoned and denied. In one case, Chenoweth writes that News pretended to be suing a hacker who was, in fact, on their own payroll.

The most creative hackers were often difficult individuals. One seems to have been murdered, KGB-style, in a Berlin park, after eastern European gangsters concluded he was a threat to their lucrative piracy business. Another on the $$$ payroll was arrested in a Bulgarian bar after shooting another man in a drunken rage.

By Chenoweth's account, this activity went well beyond defending a legitimate business against criminal attack. News Corporation was accused of using its smart card ''security'' operations to damage its competitors. News wanted its $$$ card system to be the standard everywhere, but there were several European and American competitors in the smart card business.

When big contracts were coming up for review, there were suspiciously frequent public releases of codes to exploit the cards of $$$'s competitors. The main victims of these sabotage releases were the American services DIRECTV and EchoStar, and the French Canal Plus. These corporations established their own intelligence operations to find out what was going on and for several years there was running underground warfare. In the heat of it, some star European and American hackers seem to have been double agents, triple agents, or simply playing all sides for as long as they could.

At the corporate level, News Corporation was trying to buy a 30 per cent shareholding in DIRECTV that was held by General Motors. $$$ provided the smart cards to DIRECTV and card piracy was a factor in the price of those shares. Chenoweth reports evidence that one of $$$'s prize hackers had developed a cure-all solution for piracy on their current cards, but $$$ did not release that code during the time that News Corporation had an interest in keeping DIRECTV share prices low.

Eventually Canal Plus and the US Echostar system sued $$$ for sabotaging the security of their competitor's codes. The claims were for hundreds of millions in lost revenue, let alone any share price implications or criminal liability. News Corporation had 20 lawyers in the California court-room, the plaintiffs had three. Despite compelling evidence, and all indications that the judge was convinced by it, $$$ was found guilty of only a minor misdemeanour with a $45 penalty. Even the judge's costs award against $$$ was overturned by an appeals court of California's notoriously partisan, elected judiciary. By this time, News Corporation was a significant political asset of the Republican Party.

The Australian Financial Review journalist Neil Chenoweth has been a hound of News Corporation for many years. His investigative work on this story, over more than four years, has accumulated extraordinary detail from across the globe. We get potted biographies and character sketches of most of the key characters. I'm not sure we needed to know the names of the two dogs who sniffed a suspicious package at a critical moment in a Texas parcel depot - but it proves Chenoweth was thorough.

Chenoweth notes the legal hazards of investigating News Corporation, whose normal approach to litigation he describes as ''thermonuclear''. At many points in this story, the threat of massive legal costs seems to have been enough to extinguish open challenges to News Corporation's version of the truth.

This story is full of personal drama, colourful identities, and issues of high principle. Many episodes are presented in a cinematic present tense, but the large caste and complex plot would challenge any screenwriter. Chenoweth concludes with a number of serious questions about accountability of globalised corporations. I wonder who will dare to make the movie.

Richard Thwaites was working on broadcasting policy issues while Australia's pay television system was being introduced.

Wednesday, 13 February 2013 12:21
Murdoch’s Pirates
Written by  Janet Mawdesley



There is absolutely no doubt what-so-ever that anything to do with Rupert Murdoch can almost be considered the thing novels are written about: fascinating but a figment of someone’s imagination. The defining difference is the world of Rupert Murdoch is all too real: he is dealing with real people, world politics and real skulduggery while remaining, to a large degree, at arm’s length.

One has to ask the question how can one man, in the course of one lifetime create so much power and influence, behave in such a ruthless manner, redefine the meaning and intent of world politics and law and still manage to walk away, not always unscathed, but certainly able to live another day.
Chenoweth has presented a masterful expose on the early days of one Rupert Murdoch, Newspaper mogul: a man who would be king all-be -it not just in his ivory tower but that of everyone else’s ivory tower as well, spreading his particular brand of achieve, or should one perhaps say succeed at all or any costs, worldwide.

The opening segments of the book paint a picture of a man out to succeed, ruthless, influential and prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his aims.

The world of hacking, along with much more, can be placed firmly at his doorstep, with his early attempts at launching his Pay TV networks in the United States and then Europe, allowing nothing to stand in his way.

Confronting the probable demise of his empire in the early days of pay TV he promptly went about seeking differing ways to improve his business. In those days, the relatively clean, if somewhat murky, world of hacking was being utilised throughout Europe to allow citizens of several countries access to the Star Trek series, which at that time could only be accessed throughout Europe on pay TV, free.

This entrepreneurial hacking was having a detrimental effect on Murdoch’s fledging entry into Pay TV and so he set out to both utilise and eliminate hackers, to undermine his competitors and stay one step ahead of the competition.

In doing so he placed his network of peoples slightly outside the law and on occasion definitely outside the law, recruiting some of the best, most ruthless, definitely geniuses in their field to work with him.

In more recent times a very small segment of the underbelly relating to the Murdoch Empire was exposed to public scrutiny with the phone hacking scandals in Britain in 2007 and beyond.

Scary, down-right frightening in parts and almost unbelievable, Chenoweth has thankfully added his own quirky sense of the ridiculous to help lighten a truly terrifying look into the world of Rupert Murdoch and company.

Where will the road lead for Murdoch and his men in the future? That is yet to be discovered but wherever it goes you can almost count on the fact there will be hidden depths to the process.


hxxp://www.bluewolf-reviews.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=383:murdoch%E2%80%99s-pirates&Itemid=286#