US, UK spy agencies target millions with malware: Snowden

US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden says American and British spy agencies are expanding a massive program of malware infection.

New documents revealed by Snowden show that the program will potentially target millions of computers worldwide.

The massive program of state-sponsored malware infection, which allows spies to eavesdrop, watch targets in some cases, extract data and destroy computers, is run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

The program was previously used secretly to target only a few hundred victims, but now it is being enhanced to be used on a large scale.

Snowden says the NSA has developed an automated system code-named TURBINE that allows “the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually”.

The NSA has also established fake Facebook servers, to infect target computers, according to Snowden.

The US and UK governments have come under fire since Snowden revealed how they are spying on the entire world.

Snowden, a former NSA contractor, began leaking classified intelligence documents in June 2013, revealing the extent of the NSA’s spying activities.

Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are monitoring millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

The disclosures have revealed that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans and foreign nationals as well as political leaders around the world. In August, Russia granted him asylum for one year.

Many regard Snowden as a whistleblower and a national hero for blowing the lid off the US government’s global surveillance operations.