Is this how the NSA ‘leaker’ was tracked down so quickly? Series of nearly-invisible yellow dots on the leaked document revealed exactly when and where it was printed
Reality Winner, 25, a security contractor, charged over leak of secret documents
Reports linked her with NSA files on Russia hacking published by The Intercept
Files seemed to show Russia launched attack on election company software
Blogger has now revealed Intercept files featured ‘tracking dots’ which are designed to trace the printer a document came from and the time it was printed
Dots would have allowed investigators to track down the leaker very quickly
By CHRIS PLEASANCE
DailyMail.com
6 June 2017
A series of ‘tracking dots’ that were inadvertently published by The Intercept on leaked documents could have led to the arrest of an NSA contractor.
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a Georgia security contractor with top secret clearance, was arrested and charged with leaking documents on Monday as NBC linked her to pages published by The Intercept.
Now, blog Errata Security has revealed how a series of nearly-invisible yellow dots that appeared at the top of the leaked pages would have allowed security services to track the leaker down with ease.
The leaked documents seemed to show Russia carried out cyber attacks on companies which produce software used during elections.
According to analysis carried out in 2015 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, almost every modern printer secretly adds ‘tracking dots’ to every document.
The dots appear in a grid at the top of the first page and bottom of the last page, with some spaces filled in and others left blank.
Once flipped upside down, that pattern can be fed into software which reads it.
The Rest…HERE
