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Snowden Speculates Leak of NSA Spying Tools Is Tied To Russian DNC Hack (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two former employees of the National Security Agency -- including exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden -- are speculating that Monday's leak of what are now confirmed to be advanced hacking tools belonging to the U.S. government is connected to the separate high-profile hacks and subsequent leaks of two Democratic groups. Private security firms brought in to investigate the breach of the Democratic National Committee and a separate hack of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have said that the software left behind implicates hackers tied to the Russian government. U.S. intelligence officials have privately said they, too, have high confidence of Russian government involvement. Both Snowden and Dave Aitel, an offensive security expert who spent six years as an NSA security scientist, are speculating that Monday's leak by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers is in response to growing tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the hacks on the Democratic groups. As this post was being prepared, researchers with Kaspersky Lab confirmed that the tools belong to Equation Group, one of the most sophisticated hacking groups they've ever investigated. "Why did they do it?" Snowden wrote in a series of tweets early Tuesday morning. "No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack." In a brief post of his own, Aitel agreed that Russia is the most likely suspect behind both the Democratic hacks and the leaking of the NSA spying tools. He also said the NSA data was likely obtained by someone with physical access to an NSA secure area who managed to walk out with a USB stick loaded with secrets.
K, thanks for the speculation.
Then hang by the nuts until dead!
and propaganda prepared by the U.S. Don't touch those tools if you're in this sort of business, because you are the one who will be hacked.
Except, you lost your frosty piss ... the webz wins you.
Nice one. Got it. No problems now.
Roger that.
>exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden
You give yourselves away... you're giving yourselves away...
When you find someone in trouble
And you don't know what to say
The best thing you can do for them
Is to give yourself away
Lend a hand to lift the broken
Let your heart break when God's heart breaks
Speak up for those who have no voice
And give yourself away
Give yourself away, be the hands and feet of Jesus
Give yourself away, go out and make a world of difference
Let this be the day you see how far that His love reaches
The greatest sacrifice of all is to give yourself away
Yes, it is
Jesus saw us in our suffering, He saw the debt that sin had made
And on that cruel and fateful cross He gave himself away
Jesus knew what love would cost Him, a price that only He could pay
And though they ridiculed and spat on Him, He gave Himself away
the US government employees did. Why? They are ripping off and murdering Americans.
I think it's clear that the West's thinking that Russia (and others) are less advanced as they are in computer-technology (as I dislike the wording of 'cyber'), is offset by reality by quite a bit. Reality, it seems, is that Russia is a peer at it. China is, surely, too. Popular politicians and their methods of communications are decennia behind the capabilities of even simple computercriminals. We have to wait for leaks to open up the mistakes of non-popular power-yielding individuals. But surely this will happen too. Meanwhile a crackdown on freedom and democracy in the form of forbidding encryption is for sure going to happen.
So now what? Edward, you tell us. Clearly, the opensource community has no idea.
I don't see much media coverage about the NSA hacking tools being put for sale. If they really belong to TAO, this is probably the most advanced and dangerous hack in history. It's like if somebody penetrated into the cyber equivalent of Area 51, and stole the cyber equivalent of a flying saucer! Basically now every NSA attack will be easily fingerprinted and blocked. I'm afraid people aren't exactly realizing how bad it is for the US government cyberoffensive capabilities: they've been basically wiped out.
Aren't NYT, WaPo, HuffPo (if they still publish something not about Trump), etc... interested in that? Obviously Trump's wife's tits are FAR MORE IMPORTANT, but besides those, maybe some media coverage about this hack would be appropriate.
I don't see him saying that. But thanks for inserting that narrative.
Hey, relax. Even with Area51 exposed was and where nuclear bomb tests going to proceed. Cyber is so ingrained in the elite of the US that Cyber bomb tests are and will proceed.
Flying saucer or not.
Teh peoplez who think they are intelligent, decided. It will happen. Stupid or not. No matter the money.
Last week I saw a report where Snowden tweeted an innocuous message..."It's time". Now this happens. What connections are there I wonder.
FTS:
"Why did they do it?" Snowden wrote in a series of tweets early Tuesday morning. "No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack."
Ed is in Russia, he does not communicate with America over Twitter. The US Government control Twitter.
Forget all bullshit about Ed Snowden on Twitter. He is not trying to sway anybody in America from Russia right now.
You fucked up again FBI slashdot.
Basically now every NSA attack will be easily fingerprinted and blocked.
Yep, that's exactly how these things work. You must be very well educated in infosec.
Speaking of the FBI
They do have many photos of Trump, and his wife, naked.
Weird that my draft committed suicide as I attempted to reply... Reminds me of http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... in some ways...
Anyway, the introduction to my comment is that I don't like or dislike Hillary, but she is clearly well qualified to be president and the Donald is clearly fundamentally not qualified. The HuffPo piece is just one more angle on why not.
Therefore I believe that a Trump victory would be quite similar to a decapitation strike. Insofar as America has real enemies including Putin and Daesh, they would obviously be motivated to do anything they can to help Trump win. Hacking the DNC is one angle, but I'm more concerned about a major terrorist strike timed just before the election. America's enemies may be crazy, but they aren't stupid.
Cue the crazy trolls. Actually, I'm not convinced all of Trump's trolls are crazy. Even the ones that seem to be sincere might be faking it, like Trump himself. Actually makes more sense to me that some of them are paid to fake it (perhaps by Putin and his fiends). (Apologies to Rocky and Bullwinkle, eh?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Why would you want the US/NSA to know that you've compromised them? That's stupid. It's more likely that the NSA is selling its own fingerprinted tools as an opportunity...or someone taking advantage of the current climate to take some suckers for a ride.
... they got copies of hacking tools used by the NSA. Are the two related?
If so, why did the DNC have NSA hacking tools?
If not, what is the reason for tying the stories together?
How are you so sure it isn't the NeoCommunists in the DNC doing this? the GOP wasn't hacked, Hillary's campaign was Hacked (and likely her home brew server as well) but .. yeah it has to be the NEOCONS and the VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
He's right, IDS signatures for firewalls will now be updated, and the leaked exploits will become useless. Your irony is purely idiotic, you're the one who needs IT education.
They do have many photos of Trump . . . naked.
Thanks, I just threw up in my mouth.
...was immediately followed by this week.
Coincidence? I think not!
What? "Exile" isn't even a thing (any more).
He's "Avoiding prosecution Edward Snowden." In the days when exile was a thing, it was a punishment. Just like jail, or death, or a fine. You know, the sort of thing that comes after a trial. He's not an exile, he's a fugitive.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Weird that my draft committed suicide as I attempted to reply... Reminds me of http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... in some ways...
Anyway, the introduction to my comment is that I don't like or dislike Hillary, but she is clearly well qualified to be president and the Donald is clearly fundamentally not qualified. The HuffPo piece is just one more angle on why not.
Therefore I believe that a Trump victory would be quite similar to a decapitation strike. Insofar as America has real enemies including Putin and Daesh, they would obviously be motivated to do anything they can to help Trump win. Hacking the DNC is one angle, but I'm more concerned about a major terrorist strike timed just before the election. America's enemies may be crazy, but they aren't stupid.
Cue the crazy trolls. Actually, I'm not convinced all of Trump's trolls are crazy. Even the ones that seem to be sincere might be faking it, like Trump himself. Actually makes more sense to me that some of them are paid to fake it (perhaps by Putin and his fiends). (Apologies to Rocky and Bullwinkle, eh?)
Right before posting, I always <ctrl>-A/<ctrl>-C to grab a copy of the text. That way if the system hiccups, I can open a local text file and save the text while I straighten things out. Has saved my bacon bunch of times.
On your point about Hillary being qualified, and not trying to provoke an emotional response, I took the trouble to research Hillary's decisions and accomplishments over the last 16 years.
And came up empty.
There's not a single moment that I could find, no decision or action or award, that Hillary can point to with pride and say "I did this!". The best I can come up with is that she was elected as senator.
Since you think she's qualified, can you help me out by justifying that a bit? I mean... is there *anything* you can point to that forms the basis of your opinion?
I don't mean "she's not Trump", either. I could just as well vote for the Green or Libertarian candidate, and they're also not Trump.
What has she actually *done* that merits your support?
(Note that I'm trying not to be trollish, and I haven't thrown any insults. Please keep that in mind when responding.)
Slashdot is getting ADD.
Go, read entire series of Snowden's twits on the subject. The whole point is: this disclosure is a warning shot. Imagine if the rest of the files will reveal targets, personally identifiable info on perpetrators, provable attribution etc. God forbid malware targets are in NATO countries or some such. This thing might explode into a serious international scandal.
Russians are mentioned simply because they might have better motives for pulling this off (with some tit-for-tat hacking going on right now). But that's beside the point.
Are we sure it's Snowden? Has anyone reliable confirmed he is still alive after the hashtag he tweeted?
Is that USB stick thing a periodistic license the same as they (ab)use the football fields?
USB doesn't seem the most stealthy of the interfaces for such a risky use.
Who writes articles like this? Why would Snowden be making such statements. What did he mean when they say "NSA data was likely obtained by someone with physical access to an NSA secure area who managed to walk out with a USB stick loaded with secrets." "calling itself Shadow Brokers is in response to growing tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the hacks on the Democratic groups" It reads like propaganda to me. I don't believe Snowden is in Russia and also still a reliable source of information, especially on matters to do with Russia... a nation with the potential to take over the media and even explode journalists. You can believe what you like about Snowden and the NSA, but trusting the info stream from Snowden inside of Russia is stupid.
The hacked emails show that the media colluded with the Hillary campaign to shut Bernie out. That story lasted less than 1 day before those same media entities changed the story to focus on the Russian hacker speculation, which was then followed by several days of talking about how Trump supposedly asked Russia to hack the DNC.
Look -> Squirrel.
The "NeoCommunists." Dear god, people like you actually still exist.
Well not for long anyway, judging by your user ID you'll be as dead as McCarthy in a few years. Sleep tight, you paranoid cocksucker.
Does anyone believe that Russia doesn't hack US systems? Or the reverse? This story might be slightly interesting if it revealed some specific hack that broke new ground. It might be interesting if it had a devastating effect upon US intelligence operations. It might be compelling if we could prove a direct connection to Mr. Putin. And those things may come to pass but they haven't been observed yet.
So slashdotters are left to speculate, to opine about what may become of this. Thus we may be among the first to insert foot in mouth as we wait for more facts to be available. Click bait.
We know that Putin doesn't want to deal with Clinton and he thinks Trump will be easier to 'negotiate' with, and so it's easy to believe he is attempting to pull strings; but let's be patient for real evidence of what's happening before we raise our voices.
...omphaloskepsis often...
IDK seems like snowden inside of russia might have some insight into what people in russia are doing...
Then again when your former employer is hacked, and you didn't leave on the best of terms (like if you set foot in the country again you'll be arrested tried and executed kind of not the best of terms) maybe suggesting the country you are hiding in is behind it and that you might have some special knowledge about it isn't the wisest idea.........
But what do I know. I've never been forced to flee my country for fear of prosocution (yet).
Get it right dammit. It's "All your base are belong to us."
Sheesh. Kids these days. Ain't got no respect for the wise sayings of us elders.
Copying someone else software on to servers is hardly a smoking gun, anyone involved in this sort of clandestine behaviour is going to make sure they implicate someone else / throw investigations off the trail, no "evidence" in this sort of case can be taken at face value. This is clearly a plant and probably happened after the fact or as part of the initial smoke screen.
The GOP wasn't hacked cuz it was self-destructing on its own and didn't need any help from Russia to fall completely apart.
Also there is this possibility that Trump is a Russian agent, doing what he does best, to be rewarded with ownership of a prime vacation palace on the shores of the Crimea. I'm not saying that's what's going on... I mean you just got to wonder. You know? What with being so chummy with Vladimir. It could be.... we'll have to wait and see where Trump goes after he drops out of the race... but I'm just speculating. You know?
The material walked out with a real human. It was then given to the press. More of a US Watergate informant talking to the press about their day job than any real hacking.
The US cover story sold to the press is that super smart nations got into the US political party computers, stayed in over some time totally undetected, got the data out in bulk and just left a huge amount of logs showing their tool sets and real ip ranges.
Smart enough to get in, stay but no skills in covering their origins or method.... methods that got presented to the waiting US press in full.
The covering up of another cleared, trusted person walking out the press with material had to be covered up.
Blame another nation, roll out their methods to friendly US press to sell the spy plot globally. Hope to sell the hacking fantasy to the tech sector.
The second story is some NSA tool set got found in use online and master keys to many US brands of OS, telco equipment. More people will be able to go totally undetected or create their own bespoke malware per OS just as security experts warned thanks to junk crypto standards. Lots of ex staff, former staff, nations that worked with the US have had access to the same skills, tools.
Given to them by the US or borrowed by dual citizen staff, methods kept after projects together. With so many tools floating around, in use, it was only a matter of time until someone tracked the tool sets back and got a copy in the wild...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Look -> Squirrel.
What?
Where?
Where did it go?
Doesn't that make him an ungrateful pr*ck to call them out for dirty shenanigans?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
You just set me up the bomb damn you
The correct phrase is, "I tasted bile." Leave it to Americans to be both ignorant AND disgusting, *sigh*.
(Before you mod me as a troll--yes, I'm American, and yes, I do know what I'm talking about.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
There have been tweets, but has he appeared on video anywhere?
Ban USB - in fact lets's ban Serial - or Busses - yea that'll fix it.
Were some abracadabra Cyrillic-looking characters left behind? But it is not only Russian language which uses non-Latin alphabet.
"More neocon shilling.. More russian boogeymen that never materialise on your doorstep"
..
Yea, my thoughts precisely, it's either one of North Korea, China or Russia
Or it could just be that they're both far right. Hmm... Naw your theory is funner!
and how can i use it to get nudes from computers?
python is a typo for pythong, right? not into computers really
I'm not interested in your desperate and feeble attempts to change the subject. Answer the question:
Why do you want to elect Trump and effectively decapitate America?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You won't be able to contain it. Welcome to the 21st century.
"At least not in a blue dress. And if I did, what difference does it make now."
Only one thing she *could* accomplish: saving the Supreme Court from being packed with right-wing, misogynist (but I repeat myself) psychos that by comparison would even make Scalia look like an actual jurist instead of the corrupt partisan hack that he was.
Then again, I don't think a GOP-controlled Senate will ever again let any Democratic president appoint another judge at any level, let alone a Supreme. That is their most effective way of delaying (denying) true social progress in the USA - especially the overturning of Citizens United (the Dred Scott of the modern era).
I don't believe Snowden is in Russia
I do. There aren't really a lot of places he could be and be protected from being killed or forcibly brought back to stand trial in the USA. Given that both his father and girlfriend have both been seen getting on flights to Moscow to visit him, you seem to be suggesting a highly unlikely scenario here.
and also still a reliable source of information, especially on matters to do with Russia... a nation with the potential to take over the media and even explode journalists. You can believe what you like about Snowden and the NSA, but trusting the info stream from Snowden inside of Russia is stupid.
Now you are dead on the money with this comment, but I got branded a troll here the last time I made a post suggesting something negative about Snowden. We'll see how yours does.
Look -> Squirrel.
Look -> Democracy and Free Press!... There it went!
It would be easier to get the tools off of a honeypot that was set up to entice the use of the tools rather than to get them by hacking the Equation Group. If you want the Equation Group's tools all you have to do is convince them that they have found a chink in the armor of a high value target. Let them own a computer (referred to as the pivot in the hacking world) that seems to have access to further hardened targets. The tools will start appearing. A Potemkin honeypot.
Dave Aitel DID NOT SAY the DNC hack was the Russians. He said THIS hack was the Russians. Snowden similarly did not say the DNC hack was the Russians, he said THIS hack was, and that it was related to the eacalation after the DNC hack--that is, accusations toward Russia afterwards. There is zero evidence that the DNC hack was rhe Russians, nor that it was even so sophistocated as to require a state actor.
Snowden is STILL working for the U.S. government. Convincing the public that the government has more capabilities than they really have.
In this case, the tools are released by the NSA because they are spyware, as the NSA has done before along with their Linux Distro.
You need to watch this. Clinton seems like a massive neocon. Trump is asking sane and rational questions. If the press was worth anything they'd have a real debate about this stuff, instead the personality on CNN does his best to deflect and avoid discussing the most important topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCMyHJJrdDw
You forgot to mention the link between Clinton and the Russian Uranium mining company getting rights to US government land.
Basically, whatever you think you have on Trump probably reflects back on Clinton as well. If one is corrupt, then both are.
Vote Gary Johnson.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The "snowden's a double agent!" line didn't work in 2013, why do you think anyone would believe you now?
Got any evidence for the false equivalence?
Clinton's connection with the uranium sale is well known. At a time when Russia was acting friendlier than it is now, Clinton, along with several other people, approved a sale that benefited Russia. It was an overt and legal act. I've seen speculation on Clinton's motives, but not on the other participant's motives, so I discount it.
In contrast, we've got a much less friendly Russia, and (inconclusive) evidence that it's committing crimes to influence a US election. I completely fail to see the similarity.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Nope. There's evidence that the DNC hack had Russian involvement. It isn't conclusive, but we may never get conclusive evidence on this. I don't think there's actual evidence of Russian state involvement, although it seems like reasonable speculation to me.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Z^14
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I've proven you wrong. At the very least, aren't you going to man-up and admit it?
Or are you going to keep up the charade by pretending you didn't read my post, because I'm posting A/C?
Let's see who the real coward is.
Hillary 2016 and you can't stop it.
Link me, then. And i was correct that neither Snowden nor Aitel have blamed Russia for the DNC leaks.