A recent report states that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has spent several years spying on Scandinavian defense companies. The alleged purpose of this operation was to obtain information about the competitors of the United States in the field of combat supply.
In collaboration with the Danish Intelligence Service, the US NSA would have spied on Danish and Swedish defense development companies between 2012 and 2014, when Denmark Defense bought brand new fight aircraft.
An anonymous source close to this campaign assures that the Danish military intelligence Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE) and the NSA is interested in the Swedish company Saab, Gripen fighter developers. American agents would have accessed to fiber-optic cables at a main facility on the Danish island of Amager, accessing to the traffic of several northern Europe countries.
According to the reports, the NSA allegedly used XKeyscore tracking technology, similarly to the information disclosed in 2013 by the agency’s former contractor Edward Snowden. The program allows its users to view large amounts of data in fiber optic cables for specified keywords, for example, by the names of people holding high positions in the organizations of interest.
As mentioned above, Denmark defense bought new military aircraft in 2012-2014, period during which the NSA was conducting a data interception operation at Saab. Nonetheless, the informer of Danmarks Radio was unable to provide any evidence that the two events are related. As a result, Denmark acquired 27 American F-35 fighters.
Finally, this illegal espionage operation was uncovered when an FE official discovered that the NSA was using Danish-American cooperation to carry it out. As a result, five people from the FE management were fired and are still under investigation.
The purpose of the espionage operation was allegedly to obtain information about the US competitors in the supply of fighters and the processes associated with the purchase of military aircraft by the Scandinavian countries
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.