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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.
I'm still waiting for major US news outlets to cover the story. Are they being censored? The story has major political implications, e.g. often proposed mandate to allow government to access encrypted private communications, etc. BBC seems have no problem reporting on this.
I would think that anyone who actually chose to work for the NSA in an offensive capacity would be quite dedicated to their job. Same goes for most intelligence operatives -- I can't imagine they get paid as much as they could make in a private business or a well-funded covert organization, yet there they are. By contrast, Snowden was basically a contract sysadmin who had access to what was going on -- he wasn't coming up with these plans/exploits. I'd guess anyone voluntarily working on these exploits would be pretty serious about guarding their work and wouldn't take copies home on the train with them.
So -- is it old fashioned espionage tactics, finding out who these people are and squeezing them in various ways? Did whoever is behind this just get lucky and happened upon unencrypted copies of these tools? Should be interesting to watch.
The real interesting thing will be when detection tools for this malware are created.
Well, in order for detection tools to be developed . . . folks will need access to the NSA toolkit code. The honorable thing for the ShadowBrokers to do, would be to make this freely and openly available for all.
But the fact that they are offering this as an auction, shows us that the ShadowBrokers are just in it for the money.
I'm guessing that China, Russia and the NSA itself will create bidding "fronts" to bid for them, and no private entities will be able to match their funds. So whatever is in that toolkit will still stay secret.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How quickly can a tool be built that scans all of memory for that string?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Facts are not unfair or biased. However, media can (and often does) choose which facts need to be reported.
As a quick example, homicides are down over 50% since their peak around 1992 or 1993. The last time homicides were this low was 1957 (facts, based on FBI statistics). However, I have actually seen articles about "What (insert candidate name here) is going to do about gun violence?" This already assumes several things, and it is possible that NONE of them are true:
1) Gun deaths are somehow worse than knife deaths
2) A criminal without a gun will suddenly stop being a criminal
3) That doing something will automatically make the public safer, instead of just disarming the honest people.
4) Gun laws will actually affect criminals, whose job actually involves breaking the law.
Each of those points could be a discussion by itself, and yet some "news" pretends that all assumptions are already decided.
That is now news, that is propaganda. It is actually shaping the discussion to stack the deck in your favor.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."