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Hackers Claim To Be Selling NSA Cyberweapons In Online Auction (dailydot.com)
Reader blottsie writes: A group of hackers identifying themselves as theShadow Brokers claims to have hacked the NSA's Equation Group, a team of American hackers that have been described as both "omnipotent" and "the most advanced" threat cyberspace has ever seen. On the Shadow Brokers' website, the group has shared a sample of data that some cybersecurity experts say lends credibility to the breach. The the hackers' asking price for what they claim is a cache of NSA-built cyberweapons. Motherboard's take on this is here.
Honeypot (if it's a real).
Whoever wins the auction releases every single bit of it to the public with no redaction whatsoever.
There should be a collective public bid available, I would pledge a couple of btc to the public bid if there was a credible one. I would consider it penance for the taxes I paid to create the originals.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It doesn't matter if Equation Group is part of the NSA, or if these tools come from Equation Group, or whatever. Just so long as these are real hacking tools used by any state agency, from any country, this puts the final nail in the coffin. Not that most of us needed that final nail.
The coffin being, "oh just create an encryption/security back door so that legitimate law enforcement can access it. You don't support child molesters and terrorists do you?"
Everybody. Gets. Hacked.
Secrets. Don't. Stay. Secret.
Yeah, the people who owned/created this screwed up. The point is, everyone screws up, given enough time and enough people involved.
If you were trying to scam people this is exactly how you would structure an "auction".
Lets look at the details:
1. The money you bid is kept by the seller, regardless of who wins.
2. Impossible to verify the product's authenticity before the sale.
3. There is no public notification that the winner received the goods.
4. The auctioneers can make their own bids.
5. There is no end date. The seller stops the auction at their discretion
Someone would have to be especially trusting or maybe desperate to bid on this. There are ways to set up trusted zero knowledge transfers, but these guys instead act like we should trust them just because they're anonymous.
I read the internet for the articles.
"No US hacker would be retarded enough to attempt to hack the NSA."
The NSA is not God. Its just a collection of people. People who make mistakes.
With 360,000,000 people as the population, you would be surprised at what kind of stupidity you can find.
Oh, BTW, I have all of the NSA's secret sploits, both past and current. They are for sale. Drop a few hundred bucks and they're yours – all contained on a single 3.5" floppy disk. I ran the leak through the ZIP encoder 30 times – that is why the file is so small.
This isn't some mamby-pamby bitcoin auction, but a listing on ebay. (I believe in equal access for everyone.) Come bid on the auction. There is no "Buy it Now" price (ebay sets those limits low). There is only an open auction with a reserve price of $0.99. So, if it's countries bidding against countries, whatev's, I couldn't care less.
Oh, and BTW, I am hiding behind five proxies, so there is no way to find me...