NSA has 'industrial scale' malware for spying: report: The National Security Agency has developed malware that allows it to collect data automatically from millions of computers worldwide, a report based on leaked documents showed Wednesday.
The report co-authored by former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald for the online news site The Intercept said the program has dramatically expanded the US spy agency's ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale.
The report is based on classified documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
It said the surveillance technology allows the NSA to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware "implants" which can help the agency extract data from overseas Internet and phone networks.
The report by Greenwald and reporter Ryan Gallagher said these implants were once reserved for a few hundred hard-to-reach targets whose communications could not be monitored through traditional wiretaps but that the NSA has expanded this to "industrial scale," according to the documents.
The automated system codenamed TURBINE expands the ability to gather intelligence with less human oversight, according to the report.
