Such espionage methods create understandable suspicion of legitimate vaccination efforts, and thus imperil the lives of millions of people.
But no one could have imagined how today the internet, and in particular WiFi networks and social networks, have made it possible to access any kind of electronic file, far exceeding the espionage methods employed by intelligence officers during the Cold War.
He said North Korea currently uses a more sophisticated espionage communication method known as steganography, in which secret messages are hidden within audio and video files.
Fifty years on, the exhibition illustrates what now appears to be primitive methods of espionage.
"I was very proud I took part, but I had one great regret – that I didn't know what I was doing while I was doing it". Fifty years on, the exhibition illustrates what now appears to be primitive methods of espionage.
And the intrusions used to build that espionage network employed similar methods to those F-Secure has tracked: targeted e-mails laced with infected attachments or links to infected Web sites.
The American spying operation has created a diplomatic crisis for the Obama administration, stirring fury in France, Spain and Germany, while intensifying criticism in Washington about the scope and methods of American espionage.
Imagine this hardware going elsewhere around the world, potentially into an industrial situation where the exploit becomes a method for non-governmental espionage.
Officials say that with these methods, two of the espionage cases brought in the last year stand out as being the most significant, over the long term, to American interests: the loss suffered by the National Security Agency when a former employee, Ronald W. Pelton, sold secrets to the Soviet Union, and the nearly two decades of espionage by John A. Walker Jr,, a Navy chief warrant officer.
During the Cold War that coincided with this era of rapid decolonization, the world's two superpowers turned to the same methods regularly using their espionage agencies to manipulate the leaders of newly independent states.
