needed to protect america. a typical error message from microsoft telling you of a bug in your computer. many of us get them all the time. for some users, that error message may be a way into their computer for an elite unit inside the nsa. this is nsa s hacking organization. it s 1,600 men and women, military and civilians, average age, mid 20s, maybe early 30s, so it s a very young, very tech-savvy organization. reporter: the unit s called tailored access operations or tao. new details of its activities are reported in the german magazine which cites internal nsa documents. the magazine says some of the hackers are based in this building in san antonio. aside from getting into a computer through an error message, the magazine says tao hackers can access so-called cookies, the tags that pop up showing a computer s favorite websites, and they can redirect users to a dummy page on a site
probed or attacked an average of 1.8 billion times per month last year. the need to pass comprehensive cyber security legislation is more urgent than ever. 1.8 billion attacks per month, shep. staggering to me, not surprising at all according to the security experts we spoke to, shep. shepard: proving a point. yes, in fact, the organization loosely based hacking organization called lul security. they said in a statement today, shep and i quote. we don t like the u.s. government very much. this is a small just for kicks release of some internal data from senate.gov. is this an act of war, gentlemen? problem. one security expert we spoke to today, shep, said whatever the motive all of these are entirely irresponsible. listen. if your objective is to show there is a security weakness