How And Why NSA Targets Network Admins
 

Leaked documents detail how and why the NSA targets network admins. For some reason (probably watched too many movies) I thought the whole process would be more involved than this. Edward Snowden gave The Intercept a handful of screengrabs from an internal agency message board that, among other things, detail how the NSA can monitor calls and emails moving through a foreign telco's network simply by having access to the system admin's PC. The steps for that apparently include grabbing the admin's IP address, and from there hacking the user's Facebook or web-mail accounts to gain full access to their computer via surveillance malware.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/03/...etwork_admins/