Eyder Peralta

The National Security Agency says it did not know about a critical security bug until it recently became public.

The NSA was responding to a report from Bloomberg that the agency had known about the vulnerability known as "Heartbleed" for two years and instead of alerting the tech community, it exploited the bug to "gather critical intelligence."

In a statement, the NSA said Bloomberg's report was simply "wrong." The US, the NSA said, would reveal this kind of vulnerability to developers if it ever came upon it.

The funding of a social media platform designed to undermine the Cuban government was not a covert American operation, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during his regular press briefing.

"The program referred to by the Associated Press was a development program run by the United States agency for International Development and that program was completed in 2012," Carney said. "As you know, USAID is a development agency not an intelligence agency." Carney went on to say that the US does take steps to be discreet when operating in "non-permissive environments."