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Probe Of Leaked US NSA Hacking Tools Examines Operative's Mistake (reuters.com)
Joseph Menn and John Walcott, reporting for Reuters: A U.S. investigation into a leak of hacking tools used by the National Security Agency is focusing on a theory that one of its operatives carelessly left them available on a remote computer and Russian hackers found them, four people with direct knowledge of the probe told Reuters. The tools, which enable hackers to exploit software flaws in computer and communications systems from vendors such as Cisco Systems and Fortinet Inc, were dumped onto public websites last month by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers. The public release of the tools coincided with U.S. officials saying they had concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible for hacking political party organizations in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election. On Thursday, lawmakers accused Russia of being responsible. Various explanations have been floated by officials in Washington as to how the tools were stolen. Some feared it was the work of a leaker similar to former agency contractor Edward Snowden, while others suspected the Russians might have hacked into NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
Those gosh darn Russian hackers.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Bigger picture: you saw how Snowden easily accessed all the NSA secret documents. You read how Dual_EC_DRBG, was an encryption random number generator with a backdoor key that let them strip encryption with as little as 32 bytes of a message.
If they couldn't keep their own tools secret, and couldn't keep their own staff from access to everything (2 million plus US contractors security cleared), then that backdoor key will also have been stolen.
Which means every password sent over networks protected by that encryption are also compromised. But hey, lets not give Snowden a pardon, lets give General Alexander a fat lucrative contract instead.... because...merika!
The operative's job requires them to place their tools on remote machines. That is how you make progress on a hack. I'm guessing they had a 'favorite' bundle that they deployed rather than trying tools one at a time like they were probably supposed to.
Rookie epic fail
Next time, remember: there is no such thing as a secure cloud service. Ever.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
He's ignoring the economics.
Absent the Soviet closed economy, Putin is at least 12 trillion / year short of the necessary national income to pay for a new string of wars.
Where will he get the tools, the raw materials from China, the newest radar / lidar / standing wave receive only tech?
Not for free. And it will take 3 decades to catch up with where we are now
Of course, a few more ignorant spendthrift projects like the F-35 and he can just walk in, waiting for our "superior aircraft" to take a nosedive against the F-16's he can buy from Argentina
the russians cant hack our shit they just found it laying around when someone left them on the shared global spy server. they aint /that/ good.
Russian (state sponsored) hackers seem to be the scapegoat du jour. For the past few years, all hacking was attributed to Chinese hackers. Then Donald Trump makes some flippant statement, the news starts talking about the Russian government hacking the DNC and BAM, all hacking is now attributed to Russian hackers.
Did China suddenly stop hacking entirely? Are there no longer any hackers in Romania? Where did the Nigerians go?
The tools, which enable [salaried government employees] (who don't understand how they work) to exploit software flaws in computer and communications systems (which they also don't fundamentally understand), from [American companies] such as Cisco Systems and Fortinet Inc, (whose customers and reputations and overall integrity they also don't care about), were dumped onto public websites last month by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
There, FTFY.
Perhaps by doing say industrial espionage against say the US?
There's enough nostalgia to go around. It's naive to think that the only ones with nostalgia are the most blatant actors.
C'mon people... get it right. It's "extremely careless" and you're off the hook, no charges will be recommended.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Even when the press works out its trusted US insiders walking out the data, the tech press and sock puppets still try and push an all powerful Russia or China cyber fantasy.
That other nations can get into networks, stay in, get all kinds of plain text data in bulk, get the data out without been detected. Hours later contractors find all the ip ranges, logs, fully understood and expected code fragments are found intact. The media is full aware of methods, ip's hours later...
Later the insider aspect is finally hinted at.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
George Bush was the only world leader to declare a nuclear first strike policy. The USA has invaded how many countries since the Soviet Union collapsed? How many Russian died fighting over the Crimea when it was part of Russia, how many hundreds of thousand. Seriously in what sane world would any country risk internal revolution trying to stop Don Cossacks from crossing a border to defend their relatives from attacks by Zaphorisian Cossacks (cossacks have the reputation they have because they well and truly earned it). The US government and US corporate controlled main stream media was full of it and the Russians no matter what anyone claims, including the Russian government dumped the Ukraine because it was too corrupt and costing them too much money (there are a whole lot of Ukrainians living in Russia and dumping the Ukraine they way they did, is not really all that politically acceptable, originally, not so much now). Americans just whining because they spent 5 billion dollars to give Russia back the Crimea and ended up stuck with a 30 billion dollar mess, as the EU is not interested in picking up the tab for a corrupt Ukraine).
Speaking of a corrupt Ukraine, both the EU and the US complain about it, quite a lot, yet not one faces prosecution, even when those corrupt individuals travel overseas, so the EU and US complain about the corrupt Ukrainians they are protecting from prosecution for corruption, in order to, I have no idea, just seems totally utterly stupid for governments to complain about corruption and yet do nothing what so ever to prosecute it, if fact they provide safe harbour for the profits of those corrupt individuals.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
....who we can blame this one on yet?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.