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A hack seems pretty plausible. But looking at what was leaked and from what I could guess from their lingo, there's just "scripts" (documentation on how to impl
by meowface 10y ago
A hack seems pretty plausible. But looking at what was leaked and from what I could guess from their lingo, there's just "scripts" (documentation on how to implement specific operations/implant a target) and "bins" (the code-scripts, tools, and exploits themselves). It looks very operational and task-oriented, like a messy mishmash of directories a pentester would prepare before a CTF competition or something.
The documentation is fairly shitty and poorly formatted, and the Python I looked at is abysmal (though it's not uncommon for infosec experts to be shitty scripters).
So, they probably got into something akin to a "forward operating base", or perhaps a compromised server where an incompetent implanter accidentally left all of this stuff lying around, but not an actual compromise of NSA's network. There also doesn't look to be anything in here that wasn't already known from the Snowden leaks, other than some specific technical details and context clues from people writing the documentation.
- nathancahill 10y ago"just"
- meowface 10y agoIf Snowden never leaked anything, this would be a huge revelation. But this is just some technical documentation about project codenames we already know a lot about. ################# # Survey # ################# # Set up forward tunnel to TCP/443 on the target, and reverse tunnel for NOPEN. -tunnel l 443 $TARGETIP 443 r $RHP1 127.0.0.1 $RHP1 #perform touch to gather info and set env for exploit ./eligiblecandidate.py -t https://127.0.0.1:443 touch It's dozens of documents like these, and poorly written scripts (not to be confused with operation "scripts", like movie scripts) to make it a bit easier. The only somewhat interesting thing is the exploit code for ex-0-days, but I believe vendors are mostly patched against everything discussed in the Snowden leaks. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
- msane 10y agoThe script style is intentional. They may be discovered / heard / stuck. It minimizes attribution. Even still, "poorly written" is mostly big talk.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago"Even still, "poorly written" is mostly big talk." This. Custom code (likely adapted from some other script the author saw or wrote in the past) made for a 1-time job for one server doesn't have to be efficient/good because it doesn't have to scale. Getting it written, making it do what it needs and getting as entrenched in the target as possible ASAP is far more important than writing "good" and/or legible code.
- jonknee 10y agoWell there are zero day exploits included so it's quite a bit different than Snowden's leak. It's old sure, but the NSA either had no idea they lost hold of it or knew and still decided to not warn vendors. Embarrassing either way. https://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-we-know-about-the-exploits-dumped-in-nsa-linked-shadow-brokers-hack https://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-we-know-about-the-exp...