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Canada's 'Super Secret Spy Agency' Is Releasing a Malware-Fighting Tool To the Public (www.cbc.ca)
Matthew Braga, reporting for CBC News: Canada's electronic spy agency says it is taking the "unprecedented step" of releasing one of its own cyber defence tools to the public, in a bid to help companies and organizations better defend their computers and networks against malicious threats. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) rarely goes into detail about its activities -- both offensive and defensive -- and much of what is known about the agency's activities have come from leaked documents obtained by U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and published in recent years. But as of late, CSE has acknowledged it needs to do a better job of explaining to Canadians exactly what it does. Today, it is pulling back the curtain on an open-source malware analysis tool called Assemblyline that CSE says is used to protect the Canadian government's sprawling infrastructure each day. "It's a tool that helps our analysts know what to look at, because it's overwhelming for the number of people we have to be able to protect things," Scott Jones, who heads the agency's IT security efforts, said in an interview with CBC News. On the one hand, open sourcing Assemblyline's code is a savvy act of public relations, and Jones readily admits the agency is trying to shed its "super secret spy agency" reputation in the interest of greater transparency.
As a Canadian, I'd just like to apologize for this.
Wait. We didn't do anything wrong?
I'd still like to apologize.
"Oh no... he found the
Unfortunately the Rust Organization just disbanded after learning that one of the co-founders was a white male. The remaining members were airlifted to a safe space at their local hospital but they may never be able to work on programming languages again.
Why would they need to reverse engineer it when they have the code? Secondly, yes it might but at the same time that will help improve the tool.
From the article:
"Assemblyline is described by CSE as akin to a conveyor belt: files go in, and a handful of small helper applications automatically comb through each one in search of malicious clues. On the way out, every file is given a score, which lets analysts sort old, familiar threats from the new and novel attacks that typically require a closer, more manual approach to analysis".
For the same reason you need to reverse-engineer a competitor's engine even if they give you a complete working one. Just because you don't need to crack it to expose the code, that doesn't mean you understand why it works for free.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.