How Joe Biden Accidentally Helped Us All E-Mail in Private

In the late '80s and early '90s, Phil Zimmermann was a Colorado peacenik with a half-written program that he swore would one day let people exchange messages without Big Brother peering inside. The problem was, with a freelance job and two kids, Zimmermann could never quite find the time to finish the damn code ' until Joe Biden came along.

Then-Senator Biden inserted a few words into an anti-terrorism bill that might make it easier for Big Brother ' or, at least, Uncle Sam ' to do exactly the kind of snooping Zimmermann wanted to stop. Zimmermann had a reason to finish the program. He worked day and night for months on the thing. All his half-formed plans to build a business around the software, he put aside. 'When the Biden bill hit,' Zimmermann recalls, 'we knew we had to change the facts on the ground.' He felt he had to get people communicating secretly, before Congress did something to make secret communications exceedingly difficult.

Finally, in June of the 1991, Zimmermann introduced a program called Pretty Good Privacy, which really did allow ordinarily folks to make their e-mail all-but-unreadable to outsiders. Zimmermann made PGP available for free, and it spread like a bad weed, eventually enabling millions to communicate in private.

For bringing cryptology to the masses, Zimmermann was inducted earlier this year into the Internet Society's Internet Hall of Fame, alongside such pioneers as Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Charles Herzfeld, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. (Maybe Biden will be invited in the next round, even though he eventually rescinded his non-binding resolution.)

PGP relied on a breakthrough that had happened more than a decade before, involving the most essential (and most vulnerable) element in any secret communications scheme: the key that turns plain text into coded text, and vice versa. If I want to send Spencer an encrypted message, I have to give him the key that unlocks the code first. But if I send Spencer that key out in the open, it could be intercepted ' making our secret communications not so secret any more. So the question becomes: How do you exchange keys?

For the longest time, the only reliable way seemed to be hand-to-hand, which wasn't exactly convenient for the burgeoning information age. But mathematicians had recently discovered a better solution, in 'one way' mathematical functions that are incredibly difficult to unravel. For example, I can multiply two really big prime numbers, and it'll take you forever to guess what those primes are based on the result. (OK, not quite forever; when the idea was first introduced with a king-sized product of primes in 1977, the two factors were finally figured out ' in 1994.) Alternatively, think of these functions, as Simon Singh suggests in The Code Book, like colors. I can show you a purple color, but it's not easy to tell which particular shades of blue and red produced the tint.

These functions allow you to have public encryption keys, ones that don't have to be hidden. Because even if someone intercepts our purple-colored key, there's no chance of pulling apart its red and blue components.

It was a ground-breaking idea ' 'the greatest cryptographic achievement since the invention of the monoalphabetic cipher, over 2,000 years ago,' according to Singh. Translating that idea into something usable was a whole different challenge, however.

'It was largely an exercise in petri dish cryptography,' Zimmermann says. 'They were doing calculations just to see if they could work.'

Zimmermann, on the other hand, saw a whole community that could use crypto. He and his wife were active in Colorado's liberal politics ' attending nuclear freeze rallies, and even getting the paperwork together to move to New Zealand in case the atomic doomsday clock edged much closer to midnight. Dissidents, Zimmermann felt, could use a tool for secure communication. So he, um, borrowed the patented algorithms for public key encryption and got going on what would become PGP. After Biden's resolution, Zimmermann devoted so much time to it that he missed five mortgage payments in a row. 'This was not a commercial product. It was a human rights project,' he says.

Version 1 was kind of rickety; a good code-breaker could snap it open. But it was better than the publicly available alternative: nothing. The program and its creator become cult figures in the computer underground of the early '90s. My colleague Steven Levy profiled Zimmermann in the second-ever issue of Wired. Activists as far away as the Baltics thanked Zimmermann for the tool.

Version 2 was much better, and not just because it was harder to crack. It also solved one of the outstanding issues with the public key concept: who would validate which keys were real and which ones were frauds. The prevailing wisdom at the time, as Levy notes in his landmark book Crypto, was to have a centralized authority handle the certification duties. Zimmerman had a different idea: Let people decide for themselves who's legit. If I trust Spencer and Spencer trusts Steve Levy, then I should be able to trust Levy, too. No central clearinghouse needed.

The new PGP made Zimmermann extremely popular ' with two notable exceptions. The first were the folks who held the public key patents; they were convinced that Zimmermann had violated their intellectual property rights. The second were the agents from the U.S. Customs Service, who were pretty sure Zimmermann had broken the law.

Back then, American arms control regulators treated crypto software like a munition. Exporting such a program overseas was a violation of their regulations. And since Zimmermann worked with fellow geeks around the planet on Version 2 of PGP, 'I was quite guilty,' he says. Customs agents based in San Jose, California called Zimmermann February 1993, and told him they were flying out to interview him.

A federal grand jury was impanelled in San Jose. Prosecutors subpoenaed his e-mail records, and Zimmermann could only communicate with his one-time overseas collaborators through their lawyers. The investigation dragged on for three long years, jumbling Zimmermann's already topsy-turvy life even further.

The attention only made PGP more desirable to 'netizens,' as the online public was then known. Zimmermann turned his human rights project into a business. The export control laws were rewritten after it became painfully obvious that software couldn't be contained like rocket motors. The case against PGP was dropped.

But somewhere along the way, the world took a series of ironic twists. PGP was eventually sold off to Symantec, which all but killed the consumer version of the software; it's strictly for suits these days, while an open source consortium tries, with limited success, to provide secure communications for the great unwashed. The reliance on cloud-based mail and social media ' and the reluctance of those firms to embrace crypto ' means most of us chat in the clear. The U.S. government gives dissidents tools for anonymous online communication, even as they give themselves to right to see our conversations without a warrant.

And then of course, there's that whole bit about Joe Biden being a heartbeat away from the presidency. Strange, his role as inadvertent stepfather of consumer crypto never appeared on any campaign website.

U.S. Surveillance Caught Syria's Chemical Weapons Prep

With Syrian rebel forces gaining in strength, elite units loyal to Bashar Assad received a frightening order a few weeks ago: begin preparations that could lead to the use of chemical weapons.

There was evidently no order to actually execute a chemical attack, which would be the first deadly gassing in the Mideast in almost 25 years. Nor is it clear who gave the order to prep the chemical stocks. But new information is emerging about why the U.S. government recently warned Assad against using his unconventional arsenal.

Danger Room first reported last week that U.S. officials recently saw indications that at least some Syrian military forces mixed precursor chemicals for sarin gas, which got the weaponized stocks to the point where they could be loaded onto planes and dropped. The Washington Post's Joby Warrick adds detail to that account. Some elite troops received 'specific orders' to prep the weapons. At least one Syrian army unit was caught on surveillance photos loading 'special military vehicles' that could be used to transport the weapons.

Those preparations came to a halt last week: There is apparently no evidence that 'activated chemical weapons' were loaded onto military planes or sent near rebel positions. Syria has apparently begun firing ballistic Scud missiles at rebel-held areas, but while the Scuds are capable of carrying a chemical payload, they've not done so yet. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters this week that the U.S. hasn't seen new indications of a potential chemical attack. (Which may be a statement about the status of U.S. surveillance efforts, not Assad's unconventional weapons stocks.) But Warrick writes that there were fears throughout the U.S. intelligence community that 'a single commander could unleash the deadly poisons without orders from higher up the chain of command.' The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), told Reuters the chemical weapons 'could be used at a moment's notice, which is very different from before.'

That fear heightens with concerns that the Assad regime is living on borrowed time. Once combined, Assad's sarin stocks are good for perhaps as long as a year, so those commanders don't have to fear that they've got to use the chemical weapons or lose them. 'If the situation becomes more desperate,' an anonymous Western diplomat tells Warrick, 'there's no predicting what will happen.'

But the end of the Assad regime may not be nigh after 20 months of fighting. An analyst at the well-connected Eurasia Group, Ayham Kamel, assesses that the loyalist forces are prepping a 'new strategy' of consolidating strength around urban areas under their control. They still have the advantage of air power, even with the rebels' air-defense weaponry and a big artillery advantage against the rebels' DIY rockets. Still, even with those advantages, Kamel assesses Assad will only last until mid-2013: one of its major allies, Russia, now has an ambiguous stance on its faith in Assad's ability to withstand the insurgency.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is putting skin into the game. Not only will it bring Patriot missile batteries to southeastern Turkey, under NATO auspices, but it's deploying 400 U.S. troops to help operate them. That's hardly an invading force. But it's functionally a tripwire: should Assad fire Scuds into Turkey, he'd risk killing or injuring Americans, which would surely prompt calls for retaliation. Diplomatically, President Obama announced he'd recognize a new rebel coalition as the legitimate government of Syria ' one that excludes the Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. considers an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group ' and the U.S. Agency for International Development is contracting out for a 'transition' officer based in Turkey who can help guide the coalition into something capable of governing.

Still, the Syrian opposition remains a fractious one. Some rebels are dissatisfied at the U.S. listing the Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist group, since it's apparently an effective fighting force. (It also takes rhetorical shots at WordPress, the company that makes its website's content management system, for suspending its account over a terms-of-service violation.) Lack of rebel cohesion is a major reason why the Eurasia Group's Kamel thinks Assad holds a stronger hand than typically believed: it's 'prevented the opposition from consolidating on military successes, which have then often proved transient.'

There hasn't been a chemical attack in the Middle East since Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in 1988. Assad's motivations remain unclear to U.S. officials, but according to Warrick, someone in the Syrian chain of command provided instructions to prep sarin for potential battlefield use about two weeks ago. Assad's intentions are unknowable, but using sarin will most foreclose on the life-saving option of finding a foreign country willing to accept Assad for exile. Then again, an anonymous Mideastern intelligence official told Warrick, 'If you're a general and you think you're not going to survive this, you might not care.'

Internet Identifies, Threatens Wrong Man as Newtown Shooter

Updated, 6:05 p.m. EST

In the media's rush to find out information on the suspected Newtown, Connecticut, school shooter, numerous news outlets misidentified a Facebook page belonging to someone with a similar name. Denunciations and even death threats quickly accumulated.

CNN, the Huffington Post, Slate and other news organizations pointed to the Facebook page of one Ryan Lanza, who hails from Newtown and currently lives in New Jersey. 'Ryan Lanza Facebook Page Shows Suggestive Details Of Apparent Newtown, Connecticut Shooting Suspect,' was Huffington Post's original headline before it realized the error. As of 5 p.m. EST, the Connecticut state police are declining to identify the shooter.

The public profile photo on the Facebook account was shared over 3,000 times (Update 5:00 EST: It's up to 14,000 times now). Many came with scary comments. 'You Is A Dead Man Walking'' read one. 'WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOU WANT TO KILL LITTLE BABIES,' read another. 'Selfish. Cowardly. Weak. Damned,' read a third.

Yet the owner of the page posted 'Fuck you CNN it wasn't me' and 'Everyone shut the fuck up it wasn't me,' saying he was at work during the shooting. The page owner's status updates were set to private ' a terrible irony, since the absence of the visible denial evidently resulted in more people posting condemnations of him on his Facebook page. By about 3 p.m. Eastern, the page had been taken down.

The Associated Press' Adam Goldman tweeted that the actual suspect in the Newtown killings, which have claimed the lives of 26 people so far, including 18 children (Update 5:00 EST: The death toll is now 27 people, including 20 children), is dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His name may not even be Ryan Lanza: The New York Post is reporting it's Adam Lanza. The apparent shooter's brother is being held for questioning by police.

Matt Bors, a cartoonist (and Danger Room friend) in Portland, Oregon, is Facebook friends with the misidentified Ryan Lanza. 'I'm getting inundated with messages,' Bors says. He's never met the proprietor of the page. But that hasn't stopped random strangers from denouncing Bors as actual friends with the Newtown killer.

'How could you be friend of [sic] such a monster?' Dani Ohana posted to Bors' wall. 'Please tell me you are being sarcastic. I didn't know him,' Bors replied. 'You are his friend on Facebook..' was the reply.

The information left on Lanza's page allowed people to identify his home address. A New Jersey journalist, Brett Wilse, said he had spoken with the page's proprietor, reporting 'the shooter may have had his identification,' according to the Jersey Journal.

The Facebook page's proprietor isn't the only 'Ryan Lanza' caught in a web of mistaken identity. A Twitter user adopting the handle @Ryan__Lanza tweeted, 'haha i didnt kill anyone, stop spamming my twitter please. and all my other tweets were just jokes because i only had around 20 followers.'

It's unclear where on the internet the misidentified innocents can go to reclaim their online reputations.

Update, 6:05 p.m. EST: Fox News is reporting that a Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, N.J., is Adam Lanza's brother and is currently in police custody for questioning. It is not clear that Ryan Lanza is the same person as the proprietor of the Facebook account discussed in this piece. AP is reporting Ryan Lanza is not believed to have played any role in the shooting.

SpyPhone: Pentagon Spooks Want New Tools for Mobile 'Exploitation'

The Pentagon wants to upgrade its spy corps. And one of its first jobs will be finding out what's on your iPhone.

If the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) gets its way, it'll send an expanded cadre of spies around the world to scope out threats to the U.S. military. And it won't just be a larger spy team, it'll be a geekier one. The DIA wants 'technical exploitation' tools that can efficiently access the data of people the military believes to be dangerous once their spies collect it.

That's according to a request for information the DIA sent to industry on Wednesday. The agency wants better gear for 'triage and automation, advanced technical exploitation of digital media, advanced areas of mobile forensics, software reverse engineering, and hardware exploitation, reverse engineering, and mobile applications development & engineering.' If the DIA runs across digitized information, in other words, it wants to make rapid use of it.

One of the emphasized cases here is 'captured/seized media.' Think, for instance, of all the flash drives, hard drives and CDs that Navy SEALs seized during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Flynn wants to understand both the text they'd contain, through 'automation support to enable rapid triage,' and their subtexts or metadata, using 'steganography' tools to decipher coded messages and 'deep analysis of malicious code/executables.' And that's on top of 'deep hardware exploitation of complex media with storage capacity' and reverse-engineering tools 'to discover firmware artifacts.'

As data goes mobile, in people's pockets and backpacks, so goes the DIA's focus. The agency wants 'custom solutions that allo[w] exploitation of mobile devices' like cellphones and tablets 'not commonly seen or devices not supported by commercial kits or tools.'

All this is part of an overhaul the DIA is experiencing under the new leadership of Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn spearheaded a similar push when he was the chief intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command, pushing its operatives to focus as much on snatching a dead terrorist's hard drive as on killing him in the first place. At DIA, Flynn's part of the creation of an enlarged spy corps called the Defense Clandestine Service, which is supposed to work alongside the CIA to cultivate networks of snitches. It's already meeting some resistance.

Internally, the DIA is heavily bureaucratic: About half of its 17,500 employees aren't out in the dangerous parts of the world; they're based in and around Washington. Flynn's hired six private security contractors to train his employees in self-defense, rugged living and other necessities of an expeditionary lifestyle, an effort worth $20 million. Just as substantially, Flynn's congressional overseers are dubious. The Senate version of next year's defense bill, approved last week, prohibits the Pentagon from hiring any additional spies until it can 'demonstrate that it can improve the management of clandestine HUMINT,' a term for human intelligence.

But the technical exploitation tools DIA wants don't have to wait for any such demonstration. The current Defense spy corps can use them just fine. And in keeping with Flynn's history of rapidly pushing information from the special operators who collect it to the analysts who make sense of it, the wish list seeks tools to integrate all this data 'into local and national databases ' and made readily available to analysts from the tactical to national levels.'

If all of this sounds broad, that may be the point. The wide net DIA is casting pertains to 'collection, transmission, prioritization, analysis, and dissemination of collected/captured materiel, and advanced technical exploitation tools application, configuration support, and training functions to units worldwide.' Even if the Pentagon can't yet hire more spies, it can make the ones it's already got much geekier.

Syria Fires Scud Missiles, Burning Bombs and Even Sea Mines at Rebels

The Syrian regime isn't using its chemical arsenal on its opposition, at least not yet. But it's starting to look like Bashar Assad is throwing everything else he has against the rebels, from Scud missiles to incendiary weapons. He's even chucking naval mines onto dry land to attack his foes.

Hours after announcing it will recognize a revamped Syrian opposition coalition as a revolutionary government, the Obama administration said it had indications that regime forces have recently fired at least six Scud ballistic missiles at rebel positions in the north. Countries typically fire Scuds at their foreign enemies, like Saddam Hussein did to Israel in 1991, not their own populations. (Moammar Gadhafi provides a recent exception to that rule.) NATO, for instance, recently delivered a Patriot missile battery to Turkey out of fear that Assad would turn his Scuds against the Turks.

But to the Assad regime, northern Syria practically is a foreign country these days. It's controlled by the rebels. And those rebels have advanced surface-to-air missiles that can take down regime planes. It's not hard to see why Assad's commanders might elect to fire off a few Scuds instead ' especially as the rebels continue to make advances on key regime facilities.

Robert Farley, a professor at the University of Kentucky, said the use of the Scuds most likely indicated an attempt to strike deep inside rebel-held territory, since they have a longer range than Assad's artillery. They probably also indicate that Assad is freaked out about the rebels' potential to shoot down his planes and helicopters with shoulder-fired missiles. 'A typical fighter bomber can deliver a lot more ordnance, probably with more accuracy,' Farley tells Danger Room. 'You use these for surprise, or because you're concerned about enemy air defenses.'

According to Jane's Defence Weekly, Assad has three varieties of Scuds, capable of striking targets up to about 435 miles away. But Scuds also have a psychological dimension: They're capable of carrying chemical warheads. Farley cautions that Assad can only bluff so much ' each Scud that doesn't come equipped with a Sarin gas shell may diminish the fear that the next one will ' but that's an easier assessment to make when the Scuds aren't crashing down on your neighborhood. As a psychological weapon, even a conventional Scud is a formidable thing, especially because they're not particularly accurate weapons. They could hit anywhere.

But Assad isn't just firing Scuds at his adversaries. According to Human Rights Watch, Assad is also firing so-called incendiary weapons ' munitions filled with flammable agents that cause severe burns ' at civilian areas. Napalm, white phosphorus and thermite can all be counted as incendiaries, but it's not clear to Human Rights Watch what sort of incendiary Assad loyalists are using. Its best guess is thermite, contained within Soviet-era ZAB-series bombs dropped from aircraft. (Assad, in those areas at least, appears to be less concerned about aircraft shoot-downs.)

'The bombs hit a school called 'Ghaleb Radi' Al Rifiat and several residential buildings next to it,' someone Human Rights Watch identifies as a 'local activist' in Quseir, Syria, told the organization. 'The bombs ' caught fire as they were going down from the MiG warplane. I heard a big explosion and several smaller ones. We saw smoke in the air and when we arrived to the Al Rifiyat street I saw at least nine houses on fire.'

Incendiaries are sometimes mistaken for chemical weapons, but they don't kill through toxicity, as sarin, VX and other chemical agents do. They are hard to avoid in a barrage: an RBK-250 ZAB-2.5 bomb of the sort Human Rights Watch reports Assad uses, releases '48 incendiary ZAB 2.5 submunitions over an area the size of a football field.'

The Obama administration told The New York Times that Assad's use of the Scuds indicates his desperation. Perhaps that's true: Elliot Higgins, who has been tracking the arsenals of both sides of the 20-month Syrian civil war, observes that Assad's aircraft are dropping naval mines as if they're bombs ' except without any kind of guidance system or even tail fin that guides a bomb to its intended target, indicating that accuracy isn't exactly a big concern for Assad. But the Scuds, incendiaries and mines might simply reinforce that Assad is an inventive killer who doesn't mind using the munitions he's got to eliminate his foes.

7 Secret Ways America's Stealth Armada Stays Off the Radar

It's no secret how America's stealth warplanes primarily evade enemy radars. Their airframes are specifically sculpted to scatter radar waves rather than bouncing them back to the enemy. Somewhat less important is the application, to select areas, of Radar Absorbing Material (RAM) meant to trap sensor energy not scattered by the plane's special shape.

In short, the four most important aspects of stealth are "shape, shape, shape and materials," to quote Lockheed Martin analyst Denys Overholser, whose pioneering work resulted in the F-117 Nighthawk, the world's first operational stealth warplane.

But in addition to shaping and RAM, the Pentagon's current stealth planes -- the B-2 Spirit bomber, the F-22 Raptor fighter, the RQ-170 Sentinel drone and the in-development F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- boast other, lesser-known qualities that help them avoid detection. (We left the Army's stealth helicopter out of the discussion owing to a lack of information.)

These other stealth enhancements include: chemicals to eliminate telltale contrails; sophisticated, untraceable sensors and radios; specially designed, hard-to-detect engine inlets; radar-canceling paint; and cooling systems for reducing a plane's heat signature. All of these evasion methods have been disclosed by the Air Force, although sometimes in scant detail.

With China and Russia both demonstrating a rapidly improving grasp of stealth shaping -- and materials to a lesser extent -- these other, possibly harder-to-master aspects of radar-evasion are arguably becoming more important to maintaining America's aerial advantage.

Smart Sensors

Radar is like long-range eyes in the sky for modern warplanes. Without this sensor, a plane is more or less flying blind. The problem is, radar works by emitting energy -- lots of it. And that can be detected by an enemy's own passive radar receptors in the same way that someone standing in a dark room can track the movements of another person carrying a flashlight.

The F-22, F-35 and B-2 work around this problem by practicing what Aviaton Week stealth guru Bill Sweetman called "emission-control principles." With the Raptor, emissions from the jet's APG-77 radar "are managed in intensity, duration and space to maintain the pilot's situational awareness while minimizing the chance that its signals will be intercepted." In other words, the plane's software is smart enough to use just enough energy to find and track targets -- and no more. The B-2 and F-35 have electronically-scanned radars that are similar to the Raptor's and probably employ the same tactics.

Plus the Raptor and Joint Strike Fighter both have non-emitting backup sensors that can fill in the gaps in the radar coverage. The F-22's ALR-94 radar-warning receptors are among the most sensitive ever designed and can accurately, and "silently," detect most radar-using targets at long range. The F-35 boasts a powerful set of cameras that achieve the same effect.

Photo: Air Force

Pentagon Warns: 'Pervasive' Industrial Spying Targets U.S. Space Tech

In 2011, two Chinese nationals were convicted in federal court on charges of conspiring to violate the Arms Control Export Act after attempting to buy thousands of radiation-hardened microchips and sell them to China. The day the pair were sentenced to two years in prison for the plot, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Neil MacBride, called it an example of how 'the line between traditional espionage, export violations and economic espionage has become increasingly blurred.'

It's also an example of the increasing number of military and space technology espionage cases being uncovered in the U.S. each year, according to a new report from the Defense Security Service, which acts as the Pentagon's industrial security oversight agency. According to the report, first noted by InsideDefense.com, industrial espionage has grown 'more persistent, pervasive and insidious' (.pdf) and that 'regions with active or maturing space programs' are some of the most persistent 'collectors' of sensitive radiation-hardened, or 'rad-hard' microchips, an important component for satellites. And now with North Korea having successfully launched its first satellite, it's worth taking a close look.

The report doesn't single out any country for space-tech espionage, lumping the suspected origins of espionage plots together into regions such as East Asia and the Pacific. But according to the report, many espionage attempts arising in Asia reflect 'coordinated national strategies' by governments that 'perceive themselves as being surrounded by threats, including from each other.' Because of this, these governments desire to upgrade their armies and make themselves more self-sufficient. Front companies originating in Asia and involved in espionage have also attempted to sell technology to countries that are ' wink ' 'hostile to U.S. interests.'

If it's China the DSS is referring to as a 'hostile' country, then it's a bit unusual. As a rule, the U.S. normally takes pains not to characterize China, or most countries, like that, with exceptions such as North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Still, these are only hints, and it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where these cases are coming from. Twenty-three percent of espionage attempts from East Asia were 'attributed to cyber actors and were non-specific in nature.' Attempts to acquire technology through front companies is also difficult to track. Governments and militaries in Asia use 'complex and very opaque systems' to acquire American technology, and it can be hard to establish the identity of a government behind a shady front company with no specific connections.

These cases also have often little to do with classic espionage ' like infiltrating spies into the Defense Department ' or even smuggling. Instead, most are the seemingly more mundane ways to steal military secrets, such as seeking technology directly from the suppliers and then exporting the technology without a license.

In other words, the 'spies' just ask defense, aerospace and technology companies for what they want, and hope the companies don't ask too many questions. The spies also frequently appear to be representatives of what seem to be otherwise legitimate companies, but are actually fronts. They file Request for Information paperwork (or RFIs) to get details from the government about various technologies. There's also a growing amount of 'suspicious network activity' that can include malicious programs to infect sensitive databases.

Nowhere is this more true than for rad-hard microelectronics. These chips are frequently used in space, as they're built with a greater number of transistors than other microchips, which helps protect them against the onslaught of extra-atmospheric radiation while in orbit. They're super important to satellites and NASA space missions, for one. There's also a growing number of cases targeted against other space technologies used in 'processing and manufacturing' and directed-energy systems. In 2011, reports collected by the DSS on attempts to acquire sensitive rad-hard electronics increased by 17 percent, a pretty sizable jump.

It's worth not overstating the espionage cases as a whole, though. Espionage cases against technologies that are targeted most often ' information systems, lasers and optics, aeronautics and electronics ' have not increased. But there is an increase in the overall number of reports. Some of that is probably just due to greater reporting of cases, and not necessarily more espionage. According to the DSS, the number of case reports increased by 65 percent from 2010 to 2011. The number of these reported cases that turned into 'suspicious contact reports' increased by 75 percent, though. But that may just mean the DSS is getting better at spotting the espionage. And the only consistent data is a 'relentless upward trend' in the number of cases.

The other question is how the espionage attempts break down across regions. It's probably not surprising that the Asia-Pacific region counts for most: some 42 percent. The Defense Security Service also thinks it's very likely the attempts to seize rad-hard chips will continue to increase, as 'the perceived need within this region for modern militaries combined with growing economies will very likely fuel the continued targeting of U.S. technologies,' the report notes. Combined with the Near East ' or the Middle East and North Africa ' the number jumps to 61 percent. The rest largely come from Europe and the former Soviet bloc.

It also shows just how spycraft is often rather humdrum. As opposed to the fantasy image of spies, the reality is often ' like the two Chinese nationals arrested for violating an arms embargo ' as simple as calling up a company for information. The result is that company's trade secrets ending up in China or worse, North Korea, which is a nightmare for any business owner. But for the U.S. government, it's a serious threat to national security.