The Latest in IT Security

The National Security Agency (NSA) has the ability of collecting SMS text messages and related data in bulk from around the world, a new The Guardian report shows, based on documentation obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. According to an internal NSA presentation from April 2011, the company was able to gather almost 200 million text messages a day from across the world that month. In addition to actual SMS messages, the Dishfire program collected “pretty much everything it can,” according to documents from British spy agency GCHQ. A presentation subtitled “SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit,” describes the scope of Dishfire and reveals a “Prefer” program that can conduct an automated analysis of the obtained communications in search