MOSCOW, August 20 (RIA Novosti) - Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been accused of scanning internet connections in order to discover weak spots in the internet systems of other countries and, apparently, obtain secret information from all over the world.
The spying process has been conducted via a program called Hacienda, which was developed by GCHQ programmers to procure confidential data online. Hacienda is used to target protocols like SSH, SNMP, HTTP and FTP, the Inquirer reports.
According to the German newspaper Heise, the spy activities of the GCHQ have reached extreme levels.
"In 2009, the British spy agency GCHQ made port scans a 'standard tool' to be applied against entire nations," Heise informs. "Twenty-seven countries are listed as targets of the Hacienda."
Port-scanning tools such as Hacienda are frequently used by cybercriminals in order to find vulnerable internet systems and hack websites. The weak spots they discover allow them to gain access to users’ data and steal information or replace real websites with fraudulent ones. The GCHQ expanded such activities using the port-scanning technology worldwide and, presumably, sharing the collected secret data with the “Five Eyes”, an intelligence alliance consisting of the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
In its turn, the GCHQ refused to comment on “intelligence matters” and announced that Hacienda is absolutely legal.
"All of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate," the GCHQ officials claimed.
