When it suits them (i.e. when there is data to be gained). But it's more often done through the courts, and when it needs to be a covert op, I'm guessing they'd get their buddies in friendly countries to do the dirty work.

Well how about some evidence then?

I mean, did we already forget about Ed Snowden and "SSL added and removed here :-)"?

I mean there's https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/06/on-the-subver... for one. And you can look for instances of warrant canaries to see where else they've used the existing legal system.

As for covert ops, well, they're covert. I don't have any evidence (hence I said "I'm guessing") but that's how I understand secretive agencies do things. If you look at all of the agencies involved in Stuxnet, you'd get the idea that allied countries' secret services tend to work together (or for each other) to some degree when it suits them.

The NSA spied on French private companies according to Wikileaks docs from 2015. [1]

There's many such cases. They're well known for spying on Siemens as well. With allies like the United States, who needs enemies?

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/wikileaks-enthuellung...

And NSA worked with Canada to penetrate a Brazilian oil company, which Snowden leaked

There was also inferences that they penetrated Huawei.

Petrobas is state-owned.

I might be willing to give you Huawei if you cite a source. They're a gray area (by design) due to China's strategy of military-civil fusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-civil_fusion

Dude you're replying to a comment that's replying to a comment with a source for what you're asking. I'm not sure why you want it to be the case that the US' cyber warfare capabilities are worse than competing nations but Snowden et al made it pretty clear that we're even invading the privacy of our allies and our own citizens. America is going to be fine we're perfectly capable of hacking foreign private enterprises to protect our interests

I don't know German but nothing on that translated page says anything about hacking or attacking.

Allow me to translate: "According to the new revelations, however, contracts for French companies have apparently been intercepted by US secret services for years"

Given hacking means unauthorized access to data, can you explain how intercepting confidential documents in an unauthorized manner could not possibly meet the definition?

Additionally, we know much more detail on Siemens, including the planting of malicious code, which absolutely meets any definition of hacking. [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA0P0DE/

Linus Torvalds claims the NSA reached out to him with a backdoor

Also remember the Google sniffing?

https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/07/google_engineers_slam...