Before diving into the source, a brief recap. XKEYSCORE is not a single piece of software but a distributed architecture. First developed in the mid-2000s by the NSA’s Access and Target Development units, its purpose was simple yet terrifying: to collect, parse, and query everything that flows through the internet's backbone.
To understand the source code is to understand the architecture of modern surveillance. XKeyscore is not a single tool but a federated system of distributed clusters. The source code reveals that its primary function is that of a high-velocity indexer. xkeyscore source code exclusive
: The code specifically identifies visitors of certain websites as potential extremists. For example, reading the Linux Journal was found to be a trigger. Deep Packet Inspection Before diving into the source, a brief recap
The release of these specific source code excerpts led to speculation by researchers at Techdirt and other outlets that there may have been a within the NSA, as some of the data appeared to be from a later date than the original Edward Snowden document cache. Phishing With A Darknet: Imitation of Onion Services - APWG To understand the source code is to understand
During his 2013 leaks, Edward Snowden claimed that XKEYSCORE could "write to your hard drive" if you were a target. The academic community dismissed this as hyperbole. However, the exclusive source code contains a reference to a remote_forensics module that mounts network file systems (SMB, AFP, NFS) to push a small "tagging agent" to unpatched clients.