Operations Support Branch
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]
According to anonymous witnesses who testified at Joshua Schulte's trial, 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.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Patrick Radden Keefe (6 June 2022). "The Surreal Case of a C.I.A. Hacker's Revenge". The New Yorker. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
- ^ "Statement Of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams On The Espionage Conviction Of Ex-CIA Programmer Joshua Adam Schulte". www.justice.gov. 2022-07-13. Retrieved 2022-07-29.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-07-29.
- ^ "Ex-CIA engineer convicted over massive data leak". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2022-07-29.