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The NSA Leak Is Real, Snowden Documents Confirm (theintercept.com)
Sam Biddle, reporting for The Intercept: On Monday, A hacking group calling itself the "ShadowBrokers" announced an auction for what it claimed were "cyber weapons" made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide. The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA's virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency. The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, "ace02468bdf13579." That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE. SECONDDATE plays a specialized role inside a complex global system built by the U.S. government to infect and monitor what one document estimated to be millions of computers around the world. Its release by ShadowBrokers, alongside dozens of other malicious tools, marks the first time any full copies of the NSA's offensive software have been available to the public, providing a glimpse at how an elaborate system outlined in the Snowden documents looks when deployed in the real world, as well as concrete evidence that NSA hackers don't always have the last word when it comes to computer exploitation.
The real interesting thing will be when detection tools for this malware are created. Then we will see how many people -without warrants- the NSA is using this on.
Silence is a state of mime.
seriously, when will government employess, contractor or not, realise that LYING should not be part of their job description.
Do you really need to ask if US News agencies censored? The current media puts the old Pravda to shame. If they were merely protecting State secrets I'd give them a pass on this, at least in terms of discussing details. They should however discuss concerns with the operations in general terms so that the public can debate and direct the Government. They are not however interested in protecting the State and have no concern for truth and honesty. Have not had such concerns for literally decades now. The fact that media claims to have different names makes it less visible to the unwary.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
At this point, anything broadly considered to be a "major US news outlet" has, at best, a tangential relationship with "news." CNN is hopelessly clueless and out of touch, while Fox & MSNBC are the propaganda arms of their respective parties. The NYT sat on a vitally important story, clearly in the public interest, in order to help GWB's re-election campaign. These groups are marketing organizations, who sometimes publish news as a means of promoting their brand.
On the plus side, a major US journalism outlet, The Intercept, is on it.
When the paychecks stop coming.
Its very easy to ignore the truth when your salary requires it to not be taken into account.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Its not surprising, as the signal to noise ratio is very low, and only a professional watchdog can begin to sort it all out. And even that doesn't help because there are also liars posing as watchdogs.
The internet only makes it worse, spewing like a fire hose.