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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.
... 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?
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.
Sorry, but you are posting in a profoundly ignorant way, or you are completely distorting the meaning of "decisions", "accomplishments", and "empty". True, I haven't always agreed with the things that Hillary has done, but mostly I have agreed with her objectives and been saddened in those cases when she was prevented from succeeding. One obvious example would have been healthcare reform back in the 90s, when she didn't even have a real job. However, her greatest and most obvious accomplishment was cleaning up a small part of the international mess left behind by Dubya and the big dick Cheney. Of course in that area she obviously could have done much more if the so-called Republicans weren't pledged to President Obama's failure from day one of his presidency, and by extension to the failure of every part of the federal government under his control.
That's as polite as I can get. You didn't actually say anything in response to the substance of my comment, so now I get to repeat the question: "Why do you want to decapitate America?"
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
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 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"
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).