Evidence points to another leaker at the NSA

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-intelligence-nsa-commentary-idUSKCN10X01P

by mudil • 10 years ago

378 215 10 years ago

adamc• 10 years ago

I don't think calling a thief putting up hacking tools for the highest bidder "another Snowden" is particularly accurate. (I realize this was the article title and am not complaining about the post here. I fault whomever crafted the original title.)

tombert3• 10 years ago

I agree; Snowden, whether you agree or not, was doing something he thought was right. He wasn't just trying to extort data and sell it.

s_dev• 10 years ago

Perhaps Chelsea Manning is a better comparison. Perhaps not so well intentioned or forward thinking but rather a protest outburst against a perceived regime.

jMyles9• 10 years ago

I assert that, whether someone agrees or not, Snowden was doing something that was actually right.

progressive_dad• 10 years ago

I feel as though I've been sent to sit in the corner with a dunce cap for daring to criticize a piece of journalism that equates releasing NSA spy tools on the black market with government whistleblowing.

As long as we're all stuck in the "Breakfast Club" for veering away from "the facts" might as well read something relevant: http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/huxley-to-orwell-my-helli...

mst4• 10 years ago

If you re-read the post a little more carefully, that's a reference to the ANT leak, followed by a "well, it could maybe be the same person" about the malware auction.

Seems more likely to me that the ANT leak gave the auctioneers an idea what to look for to exfiltrate once they got hold of an NSA staging server.

drvdevd3• 10 years ago

Brilliant. I believe from this vantage the whole situation becomes much less clear which is of course very interesting.

DigitalJack• 10 years ago

I had the same thought, but I'm thinking that the person(s) auctioning the stuff aren't the same person(s) that obtained it in the first place.

It was taken years ago, and just now found its way to the auction block. I think there is an interesting story about the intervening years we are missing.

dang2• 10 years ago

Ok, we s/Snowden/leaker/'d the title in the hope of making it a little more neutral.

Bud2• 10 years ago

Not sure how that helps, since the real article still bears its original title. How does it help to misrepresent the actual article?

okket• 10 years ago

Edit: Apparently somebody agreed and removed the clickbaity 'Snowden' from the title. Thanks.

DanHulton• 10 years ago

Which is why I click through to the HN comments before the article about 9/10 times. Usually more interesting and informative than the article anyway.

drvdevd3• 10 years ago

Ha! Same here. This is exactly why I wish more (overtly) political stories weren't flagged so quickly as of late... 9/10 the HN commentary really is superior.

forgetsusername• 10 years ago

Which is why I click through to the HN comments before the article about 9/10 times.

If you determined whether an article was clickbait or not based on HN comments, you wouldn't read anything, ever.

I'm skeptical that this community has a handle on what "click-bait" is. Anything that isn't written in the precise style the commentor enjoys, or isn't as information dense as a commentor would like seems to gain the label.

tgcordell• 10 years ago

I view your thought process as how 'group think' and 'reddit culture' starts to permeate HN

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

It's inevitable that there are, or were, or will be, other Edward Snowdens working at NSA. Persons who find that the Agency's mission no longer sits well with them.

The question is: who are they working for?

Snowden was working for the American People, and upholding the US Constitution.

To draw from some relevant if non-US history, Kim Philby's interests did not lie with his nation's subjects, despite his aristocratic pedigree.

nxzero2• 10 years ago

> "Snowden was working for the American People"

Who Snowden is/was working for really is likely not of much importance. What matters is what impact he had, which at least to me, is not that clear.

swalsh• 10 years ago

He's had a very clear impact. Before Snowdon thinking that the NSA was collecting data on EVERYONE was a conspiracy theory. It was "crazy". Post-Snowdon it's a proven reality. Snowdon showed how far a clandestine agency with very little oversight can go. The answer, it controls EVERYTHING, it's been proven that not only have they spied on high up allied politicians (bad, but maybe excusable) they also spied on OUR OWN.

Snowdon showed us there's this agency, with a virtually unlimited budget that can control the politicians that control the world... and they are beholden to no one, the law is a rubber stamp.

Worse, even when it was demonstrated that they outstepped the boundaries of our laws... things have remained unchanged.

Snowdon showed us the truth, then left it up to us to do something about it. Unfortunately, no group of people has so far mustered up any change. That's our own failing.

user7319553733• 10 years ago

http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2015/05/20/snowdens-glo...

"US cloud computing firms could lose between $22 billion and $35 billion in overseas business over three years. [Following Snowden leaks.]" http://www.securityweek.com/snowden-revelations-costly-us-te...

dv_dt• 10 years ago

Yup, I always thought that the bigger risk was that there were other much less ethical or patriotic versions of Snowden in the NSA who could/would leak data and not go public at all. Putting up the machinery to spy on foreign nations is a sort of 'attractive nusiance', pointing that same machinery to spy on US citizens too magnifies the attractiveness tremendously.

AnimalMuppet• 10 years ago

Historically, "interests lie with his nation's subjects" does not correlate with "aristocratic pedigree".

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

Well, not perfectly. There's Roger Mortimer and his lady friend, for example.

But the strong assumption of the time was that it did.

vocatus_gate• 10 years ago

I worked for the NSA for four years and left last year because being there bothered my conscience. Lots of smart and nice people, but I just didn't want my life's work contributing to their mission. I left a secure position with great benefits and went off to be a 1099 at one of the credit card companies. Less job security but I no longer have the burden of knowing my work is supporting something I'm strongly against.

philovivero• 10 years ago

Thank you for your principled approach to life. I wish we had more of you on our side!

(What is "our side?" I, similarly, have refused to work for defense industry, TLA agencies, etc, because I see them as net negatives to our society - this is the side I'm on)

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

Friend I knew, USAF reserve, served in Bosnia, worked at one of the major CC companies in the 1990s.

He related the story of talking to a friend in national intelligence. The FoaF: "You've got more data on people than we do."

"China's Internet" (Bloomberg video) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VAesMQ6VtK8

The War on Cash: http://thelongandshort.org/society/war-on-cash

(Also discussed at HN.)

John238323• 10 years ago

In addition, if Russia had stolen the hacking tools, it would be senseless to publicize the theft, let alone put them up for sale. It would be like a safecracker stealing the combination to a bank vault and putting it on Facebook. Once revealed, companies and governments would patch their firewalls, just as the bank would change its combination.

Why would this be bad for Russians (if this was indeed the Russians)? We can/should assume that Russia has it's own methods of infiltrating systems. The value of this data to them would be knowledge of how it's done, not necessarily hoarding and replicating how the NSA does it. If anything, having vendor's patch exploits that they're not using, but their enemy is, would be a great chess move.

nemothekid• 10 years ago

Also is the narrative that its a state sponsored hacker vs a russia-based hacktivist?

silvestrov3• 10 years ago

The analogy is faulty. It's not only about breaking into systems but also about knowledge of other countries hacking operations.

If the Russians knows NSAs tools they know what to look for when trying to figure out what NSA is up to. That's hugely valuable information.

John238323• 10 years ago

I think you agreed with me.

gremlinsinc• 10 years ago

The longer the russian's know or have the exploits without the NSA knowing they've been compromised, the longer they can hold it against them. -- Imagine you've hacked a bank network vs robbing a single bank, and every week you take 1 penny from all users without anyone knowing, and do this for 3+ years... you'd get a lot more than a one-off bank robbery... That's the long game that Russia would play - milk it for every ounce of use, and keep it totally secret.

They get nothing from exposing it, hacktivists on the other hand get a lot more, and are more boastful about their exploits.

John238323• 10 years ago

Hold what against them? The exploit? That makes no sense.

The Russians do not use the exact same set of tools that the NSA does. Sure, they may have discovered some of the same exploits, but the two do not have the same "toolbox" strictly speaking. Releasing a set of tools used by the NSA doesn't mean that Russia loses access to the systems that they have compromised...

Your bank heist analogy doesn't apply here.

nathancahill• 10 years ago

"Oh okay. So you're gonna be making a lot of money, right?"

"Yeah."

"Right. It's not yours?"

"Well it becomes ours."

"How is that not stealing?"

drzaiusapelord• 10 years ago

I imagine if the NSA knows of a zero day that its systems are patched against it or at least their IPS blocks that attack.

atmosx2• 10 years ago

To be honest, it's very difficult to have a clear view on whether is makes sense to call the Russians on this or not. We know too little and we speculate to much :-)

Plus, for a USA agency, it goes without saying that when shit hits the fan it's either Russians, Chinese or Aliens not necessarily in that order.

tptacek16• 10 years ago

Yes, this Bamford argument doesn't make much sense either. It seems to imply that the Russians and Americans are working from the same set of vulnerabilities. I don't know anyone who does this work professionally who thinks that's likely to be true.

nxzero2• 10 years ago

Anyone that expects anything related to "intelligence" to have logical explanations might very easily find themselves chasing tails.

drvdevd3• 10 years ago

Good point. It's hard to take anything at face value in a situation like this (other than the working code itself that was released). In particular: everything in the corresponding manifesto could be complete nonsense or misdirection.

the_wumpus• 10 years ago

One hundred Royal Zorkmids for the title author!

advisedwang• 10 years ago

It seems likely (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_...) that there are actually quite a few whistleblowers/leakers out there.

PieterH2• 10 years ago

As soon as the author began referencing Applebaum seriously, the article lost most of its credibility.

ryanlol• 10 years ago

I'm curious, why? Is it because of the recent sexual misconduct allegations or something else?

jlappi• 10 years ago

Can't speak for OP, but that's probably it. After the whole cluster that blew up around him the community seems very split in their opinion of him now.

mst4• 10 years ago

I dunno, Applebaum might've been an epic plagiarist, but the work he was trying to take credit for was often solid.

PieterH2• 10 years ago

I'm sure the work was solid, yet not his. To weave him into this story with that stupid tagline "the most dangerous man on the Internet" with the insinuation he was some kind of hacker... is garbage journalism.

kalsk• 10 years ago

Applebaum might've been an epic plagiarist

What are the plagiarism charges against him? I'm only aware of the sexual harassment/assault/rape allegations.

silvestrov3• 10 years ago

Even if it's not Russia, the release of the hacking tools gives weight to the argument that nsa/fbi should not be able to demand companies to create a back door in their products.

Apple: If we're forced to build a tool to hack iPhones, someone will steal it.
FBI: Nonsense.
Russia: We just published NSA's hacking tools

https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/765785340892372992

AceJohnny2• 10 years ago

Except the FBI explicitly said Apple could work on and execute the backdoor internally and destroy it after use. It would never need to come out of their secure facilities.

So I don't think this was the strongest argument for Apple. A better one is that once the US can compel Apple to do this, what's to stop Russia, China from demanding the same thing?

silvestrov3• 10 years ago

When the back door is created, it cannot be destroyed. FBI had tons of other phones they wanted to access [1]. Hacking one phone would set a precedent that Apple would have to hack numerous other phones.

It is so simple to steal software, just like NSA's hacking tools were stolen.

If NSA cannot keep software safe, why can you think that Apple can? I think it's unreasonable to require Apple to have a higher level of security than NSA effectively has.

1: http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Apple-FBI-face-off-in-C...

toufka• 10 years ago

and destroy it after use...

And then recreate, and redestroy it for each of the >100 law enforcement requests in NY alone. Etc. Etc. Though the FBI says that, Apple pointed out in their brief that the reality of what that kind of situation would look like was absurd.

vonmoltke3• 10 years ago

What stops them from doing it now? What about Apple being willing to hop in bed with the US government affects whether they would with Russia or China, or whether either of them would ask for this from Apple?

wyager• 10 years ago

Why do you trust that this was actually the FBI's intent? That sounds like a desperate PR gambit.

rdtsc4• 10 years ago

Apple could work on and execute the backdoor internally and destroy it after use.

Right. So if there is a backdoor, they won't commit the code to a repo, but write it from scratch every time FBI calls them.

Yes, very realistic.

From that we learn two things, both bad and which tells us not to listen to or work with FBI if possible:

1) FBI is stupid and doesn't know how these things work

2) FBI is malicious and is lying

maze-le• 10 years ago

Lets forget the argument, that this sets a dangerous precedent for a moment... Even if you assume the strictest possible processes, even if you assume only the most genius techs working on a backdoor like this: In the end the people implementing and operating a backdoor are just people like you and me. People make mistakes no matter how good the skills and processes are. And if this mistake happens, as it will happen invariably, the backdoor is out in the open and usable for adversaries with even more malicious intent.

pdkl95• 10 years ago

once the US can compel Apple to do this,

What's to stop the FBI from repeating the same process in the future? Fighting future orders would be much harder after precedent is established.

Remember that after James Comey talked about spending "a lot" to get into the San Bernadino phone, he wanted a way into the phones that "doesn't involve spending tons of money in a way that's un-scaleable."[1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/04/2...

fooey• 10 years ago

Let's make state sponsored backdoors mainstream, and then build all our of devices in foreign countries. What could go wrong?

stcredzero• 10 years ago

That's the best 2 sentence summary of the politics around technology and security I've seen so far!

finid3• 10 years ago

State-sponsored backdoors have been mainstreams for decades. Practically every major piece of software and hardware that's not open source has a backdoor embedded.

Even popular anti-virus programs on Windows have been jimmied to allow state-sponsored malware through

comex3• 10 years ago

Even if it's not Russia, the release of the hacking tools gives weight to the argument that nsa/fbi should not be able to demand companies to create a back door in their products.

Not really.

iOS already, today, for no other reason than to prevent downgrades, verifies every firmware upgrade/restore with an Apple server, which sends back a per-device signature. Technically, it would not be difficult for Apple to have that same server authorize a special spy firmware only for specific device IDs. The only way this could result in a mass compromise is if Apple were hacked, but hacking Apple already gets you that - the hard part isn't writing code to spy on people (especially if you've hacked them and thus have full iOS source code), it's signing it.

This is different from exploits for code vulnerabilities, where there's always at minimum a secret (the location of the bug) that can't get out, and in some cases going from there to a working exploit is also difficult.

At worst, if Apple went beyond compromising that one phone and set up an ongoing process to compromise phones as requested by law enforcement - then there might be some sort of online portal, and maybe it could be hacked either directly or by stealing a legitimate agency's credentials. Maybe then the spy system could be used by unsympathetic governments against their enemies, though only by stealthily submitting individual requests; there would be no way to exfiltrate something from law enforcement that would compromise everyone. I don't think that's what most people are thinking when they talk about a back door "getting out" or whatnot.

Personally, I agree with Apple's refusal to create and sign a spy firmware on ethical as well as pragmatic grounds. But there's a lot of misinformation about the issue.

DanielDent• 10 years ago

I think these types of issues are why apple has started removing some of the encryption of the firmware itself.

tw042• 10 years ago

iOS already, today, for no other reason than to prevent downgrades, verifies every firmware upgrade/restore with an Apple server, which sends back a per-device signature.

Are we pretending now that the government couldn't MITM and fake the response? I think they've proven they can MITM pretty much ANYTHING their hearts desire.

willstrafach2• 10 years ago

That is not how TSS is set up though. "Special" restores are heavily audited so many would be aware that it occurred. who knows how easy it would be to keep that contained.

Further, if people are paranoid of this, a crowdsource based mitm restore server could be setup (similar to saurik's) to watch the hashes and block restore + alert the user if a firmware file is about to be installed with a different hash than what it should be.

sickbeard2• 10 years ago

Isn't this the reason why governments react harshly to people like Snowden and Manning? To discourage even worse breaches?

matt_wulfeck• 10 years ago

Clearly the harsh reaction to Snowden has done nothing in this case. I wonder what the reaction would be if Snowden would have been treated like a whistleblower and not a traitor?

sickbeard2• 10 years ago

Compared to past infractions Snowden has gotten off relatively easy

tptacek16• 10 years ago

Where by evidence for another NSA leaker, Bamford means literally no evidence. The fulcrum of his op-ed rebuts an argument nobody is making --- that Snowden himself disclosed this cache of exploit tools.

The prevailing narrative, one echoed by Snowden himself, was that this was likely taken from a staging server: a machine somewhere out on the Internet used as a pivot point for attacks. Snowden claims (I don't know with how much authority) that a compromise of one of those staging servers is not without precedent.

Nothing in this entire piece refutes or even engages with that narrative.

narrator• 10 years ago

What evidence is there for another NSA hacker? Proof by narrative. The narrative says that the NSA is impenetrable, except for inside threats. Therefore it was an inside threat.

Proof by narrative is the slippery slope whereby the state becomes a religion.

It's borrowed from religion and used in the modern state. In the old testament, whenever the chosen people were defeated, the only reason could be that someone was making sacrifices to the wrong god somewhere. The proof was that god would have been with them on the battlefield otherwise.

It's why, in Stalinist show trials, political enemies are made to confess for crimes of sabotaging production, because the narrative says that the production process is perfect in the Soviet Union and the only way that quotas would fail to be met is because of reactionary saboteurs. Fallacious or not, each additional conviction reinforces the state's narrative.

tptacek16• 10 years ago

"The NSA is impenetrable" is not and was not the prevailing narrative, to say the least.

jomamaxx7• 10 years ago

The US government promotes a lot of narratives, but it doesn't really talk much about the NSA. So I'm not sure there's a narrative play here.

And your comment about religion is simply false, this is reaching way too far and cynically.

guelo3• 10 years ago

What doesn't make sense about the staging server idea, which seems to mean a command and control server, is why there would be a bunch of different tools for unrelated exploits on the same server.

EvanAnderson• 10 years ago

I don't think an operator just dumping a large cache of tools and leaving it behind is far-fetched. People are lazy and make mistakes.

rdtsc4• 10 years ago

Because it is easy to automate?

etjossem3• 10 years ago

Snowden himself talks about this. His comments should be required reading for anyone in this thread:

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514347196084224

tptacek16• 10 years ago

A staging server isn't a C&C server. Anyone who's ever broken into sites as a teenager or done pentesting for their career understands the concept: it's a shell on a server unrelated to you or your business, which you can log into from anywhere, and on which all your tools are built.

You typically don't run your exploits from your own machine, both because you don't want a single network hop between you and your target, and because your tools may be inconvenient to run on your own machine.

rdtsc4• 10 years ago

Can go either way. I can see Snowden doing it as well.

File times just a few months away from when Snowden fled is interesting. It is still too close to the date that looks suspicious.

One way to interpret is that Snowden inspired someone else there who was dissatisfied with the job or the what NSA was doing. The other is that Snowden try to modify the files to make it seem like it was not him.

Him mentioning that "staging servers have been compromised" before can also be interpreted as him preparing the stage of releasing this and hoping everyone would read that statement at face value.

tedunangst3• 10 years ago

Snowden's own theory, if you're curious, is that after his leaks the NSA burned all their staging servers and started over, cutting off access to anyone who compromised the existing servers.

lawnchair_larry2• 10 years ago

No, you missed it. The point that Bamford made is that he personally got to grep the Snowden leaks for the ANT catalog a few years ago, and this stuff wasn't in there. But this stuff is real and we have it now. Which means the ANT catalog was released by "another snowden".

You're now rebutting a point that the article isn't making by saying it's rebutting a point no one is making!

Nobody implied Snowden released it or was even suspected of releasing it, including Bamford. He is challenging the narrative that it was Russian hackers, because of the other, non-Snowden leak evidence.

tptacek16• 10 years ago

He got to grep Snowden's cache. So what? Who is saying Snowden is behind Shadow Brokers? NOBODY.

Aelinsaar• 10 years ago

...It's like they have no idea what "Evidence" actually means, or frankly what the hell Snowden actually did; it wasn't selling hacking tools on the black market!

SixSigma2• 10 years ago

This is all smoke and mirrors.

The DNC is claiming a Russian Hack with wonderful support from the media. Reuters, for instance, gave over $1m to the Clinton Foundation.

When the FBI accused the N. Koreans of the Sony hack, at least there was some credible evidence conjoured up. Obama used an executive order to apply more sanctions on NK even though there were voices saying it was still inconclusive.

But now we are expected to believe the DNC has been hacked by the Russians in partnership with Trump.

Seth Rich, supposed DNC leaker gets shot in the back.

And now this.

The DNC stabs Russia in the back - Bill was happy to accept $500,000 for a speech in Moscow and the Clinton Foundation $millions just before Hillary authorized a major Uranium deal.

I sound crazed writing this, like I'm something from InfoWars. This election cycle is standing the world on its head. Be very careful who you believe.

swang2• 10 years ago

OR MAYBE...

Seth Rich was shot by the FBI, in order to make it _look_ like the DNC shot him.

"supposed leaker" is really stretching it. there has been zero evidence to it other than wikileaks insinuating he was, which is a bit of a shitty thing for them to have done considering now everyone is focused on that aspect rather than about who actually murdered him.

SixSigma2• 10 years ago

That's my point. I'm not asserting anything except don't take any assertions at face value.

mamon• 10 years ago

It is "smoke and mirrors", but in completely different sense, which is clear now:

Russians have been known for a long time (whole Cold War) for being able to sacrifice one, less important spy to distract enemy's attention from more valuable one.

Now think about Snowden in this context: few years ago NSA must had been sniffing around, looking for a leak. Suddenly, one of their employes takes few laptops with secret data and runs, ending up in Russia. NSA is furious, but on the other hand their alertness goes down. Few years later it turns out that there's still someone leaking their secrets.

orly_bookz• 10 years ago

Doesn't that completely ignore the fact that Snowden got caught in Russia in the first place because his passport got revoked?

bronz• 10 years ago

i dont understand why the highest bid in the shadow brokers auction is less than a thousand dollars

bdcravens• 10 years ago

Highest bid? More like all the bids, combined.

wongarsu• 10 years ago

To me it wasn't clear in the auction description if it's possible to increase a previous bid.

- If it's not possible, then the only strategy is to bid as late as possible: Suppose Group A bids $1000, Group B bids $1001. To win the auction Group A would have to transfer another $1002, making a total investement of $2003. Group C on the other hand only has to commit a total investement of $1002 to win at this point. Since the duration of the auction isn't known you would wait for everyone else to make a bid first, since the person to bid last is in the advantage. If everyone does that, this becomes the ultimate waiting game.

- If on the other hand it is possible to increase one's bid by just transfering the difference, then this is a tullock auction[1]: a classical example from game theory where the only rational strategy is not to bid at all (unless you are completely sure that nobody else will bid. As soon as you have two bidders, both behaving rationally would lead to both committing an infinite amount of money, one of them losing it all).

So just from a game theory standpoint nobody would actually bid in this auction. Add to this the very likely possibility that the public leak contains all data they have and that this auction is a scam, and this isn't attractive at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction (Dollar auctions are a two-player example of Tullock auctions)

zmanian• 10 years ago

Bamford's expertise in espionage is pretty similar.

There seem to be two plausible explanations for the Shadow Brokers release.

1. The doctrine of the US govt in cyberwar is proportionate response. This is either preemption or escalation on behalf of Russia. This assumes the attribution of Russia for Democratic political hacks are accurate.

2. This is further activity by whomever leaked the ANT catalog to Applebaum.

The Shadow Brokers are going to be difficult to attribute technically. Attribution is based more on your theory about what's happening the Russian covert escalation.

wstrange• 10 years ago

Or a third possibility: This is a deliberate release for propaganda purposes (more funding, dis-information, etc.)

justcommenting• 10 years ago

Does anyone else recall Jacob Appelbaum referring to RC6 constants [0] in public talks (e.g. 30c3) back in 2013?

I'm surprised Appelbaum hasn't been directly suggested as a potential source[1,2].

[0] https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/75812/the-equation-giv...

[1] http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/12661/what-could-l...

[2] http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/jacob-appelbaum-30c3-...

redwards510• 10 years ago

Do people really think this "auction" is legit? That people can seriously bid on these tools? The whole thing plainly sounds like a big joke for maximum attention. There is no real intention to sell the tools, at least not this way. The terms of the auction are ridiculous; no one with enough money to make a serious bid would risk losing it all like that.

Perpetuating the meme that this is a serious auction is dangerous and faulty journalism. It is a publicity stunt to embarrass the NSA. Let's not get hysterical and pretend that some third world terrorist country could obtain the NSA's cyber capability by bidding all of their petro-dollars in this farce.

etjossem3• 10 years ago

Snowden has a theory that Russia had these tools for a long time, the auction has nothing to do with it, and it's political signaling related to the DNC hacks. Worth a read:

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765515087062982656

atmosx2• 10 years ago

A more logical explanation could also be insider theft. If that’s the case, it’s one more reason to question the usefulness of an agency that secretly collects private information on millions of Americans but can’t keep its most valuable data from being stolen, or as it appears in this case, being used against us.

If there's anyone still questioning the results of Snowden's move, here you have it. The Reuters opinion is stating that this data is potentially being using against us. If the perception that the NSA doesn't collect for the public good becomes broadly accepted, change can be achieved at a political level.

lostlogin• 10 years ago

The article sort of makes fun of the hackers writing, then immediately writes "loosing" instead of "losing".

partycoder• 10 years ago

Or probably it's information intoxication (leaking fake information)

grandalf• 10 years ago

Once a useful zero-day has been discovered by an adversary, it may make sense to give up using it so that one's own side's computers are not vulnerable.

My guess is that the NSA has excellent methods for detecting DNS exfiltration and the recent tools are at least a decade old technology.

What's interesting is the disinformation value of intentionally releasing the tools, but to understand that we'd have to know who the intended adversary was.

thomasrossi• 10 years ago

"It’s one more reason why NSA may prove to be one of Washington’s greatest liabilities rather than assets." WOW, never though I'd read that on something like Reuters, he put his foot down.. :s

tptacek16• 10 years ago

It's an op-ed.

return0• 10 years ago

Why don't we have widespread use of tools that spoof online activity ?

bogomipz• 10 years ago

"In addition, if Russia had stolen the hacking tools, it would be senseless to publicize the theft, let alone put them up for sale."

No not all Russia was recently accused of hacking the DNC in the US, so it would a perfectly logical for one state actor to say to another "you do it too and here is evidence." Is that not so obvious?

Evidence points to another leaker at the NSA

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