How Snowden got the NSA documents
It's been known for a while that Edward Snowden was a systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton doing contract work for the NSA when he obtained the documents which he subsequently leaked to the press. But how did he get at these documents? NBC News has an investigations story on "How Snowden did it" which purports to explain.
The story reveals the problem, although incidentally to their focus on a red herring. The culprit, according to the story, was Snowden's access to NSA systems, from his Honolulu location, through a "'thin client' computer". The story does not name the specific thin client technology used, but the most popular would be products by Citrix, such as their VDI-in-a-Box. These products allow a user to connect using a special client program to a server which runs numerous virtual desktop sessions, each of which appears to be a Windows desktop system. Windows Server comes with a similar, if less-capable technology.
