Google Cookies Help NSA Identify Targets for Hacking and Spying
It isn’t just online advertisers that benefit from user-tracking cookies. The National Security Agency has been taking advantage of the cookies that companies force on users to pinpoint targets they want to hack, according to newly released Edward Snowden documents.
The NSA and the British spy agency GCHQ look for ad tracking cookies in their wiretapped internet packets to identify specific people browsing the Internet. They especially focus on Google’s ubiquitous “PREF” cookie, which doesn’t identify the user’s name or e-mail address, but does include unique numeric codes that identify the user’s browser to websites.
These codes help the spy agencies hone in on specific machines they want to attack, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. The documents say the NSA uses the cookies to “enable remote exploitation.” CNE, or computer network exploitation, is the military’s term for hacking conducted to obtain intelligence.
