Operations Support Branch
 Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency with wordmark | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | Unknown |
| Type | Department of the Central Intelligence Agency |
| Jurisdiction | Central Intelligence Agency |
| Status | Active (As of 2020) |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. (Langley, Virginia) |
| Employees | Classified |
| Annual budget | Classified |
| Parent department | Central Intelligence Agency |
| Website | https://www.cia.gov/ |
The Operations Support Branch (O.S.B.) is a unit of the cyber-intelligence division of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.).[1] It is located on the ninth floor of a secret facility in the suburbs of northern Virginia, west of Washington, D.C.[1] Patrick Radden Keefe described the O.S.B. as the CIA's "secret hacker unit, in which a cadre of élite engineers create cyberweapons" in a June 2022 article for The New Yorker.[1]
The O.S.B. specialises in physical access operations in 'physical access' is gained to electronic devices owned by high value individual targets such as foreign government officials and terrorists.[1] The O.S.B. is able to quickly develop tools that can be utilised in cyberintelligence missions at short notice.[1]
The O.S.B. was filled with workspace pranks, like stealing coworkers' things, name calling, shoving matches, rubber band and Nerf gun wars. Asked if she was aware of this, the former head of C.I.A.'s Center for Cyber Intelligence Bonnie Stith said she was not.[2]
The employees of the O.S.B. numbered about a dozen in the 2010s.[1] Radden Keefe described the extreme secrecy of the O.S.B. at this period as resulting in staff unable to " ... take work home, or talk with anyone on the outside about what they did all day. Their office was a classified sanctum, a locked vault. Like the crew of a submarine, they forged strong bonds—and strong antagonisms".[1] The software engineer Joshua Schulte was employed by the O.S.B. from 2010 to 2016. He was convicted of being the leaker of the Vault 7 documents which detail electronic surveillance and cyber warfare tools developed by the C.I.A.[1][3][4][5] Schulte was nicknamed 'Voldemort' during his time at the O.S.B.[1] The leak and publication of the Vault 7 documents was a significant blow to the C.I.A., a senior official likened it to the 'digital' equivalent of the attack on Pearl Harbor in its scope and fallout.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Patrick Radden Keefe (6 June 2022). "The Surreal Case of a C.I.A. Hacker's Revenge". The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/the-surreal-case-of-a-cia-hackers-revenge. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
- ↑ Hong, Nicole (2020-02-17). "Life of a C.I.A. Coder: Nerf Guns, Pranks and Fat Jokes" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/nyregion/joshua-schulte-cia-wikileaks.html.
- ↑ "Statement Of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams On The Espionage Conviction Of Ex-CIA Programmer Joshua Adam Schulte" (in en). 2022-07-13. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/statement-us-attorney-damian-williams-espionage-conviction-ex-cia-programmer-joshua.
- ↑ Shanahan, Ed (2022-07-13). "Ex-C.I.A. Engineer Convicted in Biggest Theft Ever of Agency Secrets" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/nyregion/cia-engineer-joshua-schulte-theft-convicted.html.
- ↑ "Ex-CIA engineer convicted over massive data leak" (in en). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/14/ex-cia-engineer-joshua-schulte-convicted-of-largest-data.
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