“According to the former intelligence official, once the Iranian double agent showed Iranian intelligence the website used to communicate with his or her CIA handlers, they began to scour the internet for websites with similar digital signifiers or components — eventually hitting on the right string of advanced search terms to locate other secret CIA websites. From there, Iranian intelligence tracked who was visiting these sites, and from where, and began to unravel the wider CIA network.” continues the report.

“In fact, the Iranians used Google to identify the website the CIA was using to communicate with agents.”

Iran announced identified and arrested many spies, some of them were executed.

Iran also shared information of the CIA communication network with friendly countries that used it to dismantle CIA’s activities in their own territories.

In a 2012 incident in China, the Chinese government identified and killed 30 US spies.

The report published by Yahoo also cited a defense contractor for the CIA named John Reidy that warned the agency of it was using insecure communications systems in 2008, and again in 2010. Unfortunately, he was fired by the agency, likely in retaliation for not shutting up.

“In 2008 — well before the Iranians had arrested any agents — a defense contractor named John Reidy, whose job it was to identify, contact and manage human sources for the CIA in Iran, had already sounded an alarm about a “massive intelligence failure” having to do with “communications” with sources.” states the report.

“According to Reidy’s publicly available but heavily redacted whistleblower disclosure, by 2010 he said he was told that the “nightmare scenario” he had warned about regarding the secret communications platform had, in fact, occurred.”

“It was a recipe for disaster,” Reidy said. “We had a catastrophic failure on our hands that would ensnare a great many of our sources.”

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – intelligence, spies)

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