It was operational at the beginning of the 2010. A website on Star Wars unofficial (Starwarsweb.net), like so many others, offered content such as discussion forums and information about the films and video games of the franchise, but with a very different purpose. The site was operated by the CIA and was part of a network of websites that was used as a secret communication system with informants In all parts of the world. It worked well until Iran discovered it, which led to a wave of confidant deaths in China and Iran and the capture of others.
The network covered hundreds of websites with all kinds of themes that were just a facade. From comedy sites to extreme sports or Brazilian music and, according to the researcher Ciro Santelliwere aim countries like France, Germany, Brazil and Spainjudging by the content and language they presented. In the case of Spain, he points out extincts a long time ago as Weapons today, Mountaineering and adventure and Police order.
Yahoo, in a 2018 investigation, citing sources from the CIA, described the situation in the agency, after knowing that his system had been discovered, such as’catastrophic ‘. After uncovering, information that I will have shared with China, More than two dozen sources from the US agency in the latter country died between 2011 and 2012. In Iran, in 2011, 30 CIA informants were arrested. Some prisoners and others executed. Finally, The CIA deactivated the website.
This was the secret communication system of the hidden CIA on websites
The system was born as a way of communicating in cases where you could not have a face -to -face meeting and its operation was very simple. You just had to write, in the search option within the site itself, a password that activated a log process (identification with credentials) to communicate with the CIA.
According to Yahoo, Iran managed to discover the communication system Through a double agent. But, in any case, he was giving much greater use than was originally foreseen.
‘It was never conceived to use in the long term for people to talk to their sources. The problem was that it worked well for too long, with too much people. But it was an elementary system, ‘said one of the middle sources.
The system had not been built to resist the counterintelligence of state actors such as Iran or China, and their security was soon evidenced. An mistake made by the CIA was Use sequential IP addresses to build your web networkaccording to Reuters. So, once the first found, It was easy to locate the others. From there, Iranian intelligence He tracked who visited those sites and whereto unravel the network of informants of the CIA.