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Evidence points to another leaker at the NSA

378 points by mudil 10y ago

adamc 10y 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.)
- tombert 10y 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 10y 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.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      Chelsea Manning risked even more, was rewarded far less, and successfully liberated far more of the data belonging to the public. Very little of what she revealed passes any sort of common sense test about what is rightly held secret by a public entity, but rather showed that the government keeps secret anything that is politically dangerous for the narrative it tries to maintain. I see nothing but good intentions. Forward-thinking? Maybe you're right there, at least in terms of her own well-being. Perhaps she was counting on us for more than we're willing to do in terms of rescuing her from a life of torture at the hands of the state.
      - imglorp 10y ago
        Regarding selective disclosure, at least Snowden and Greenwald made an attempt to keep people from getting killed. There's a big difference between leaking methods and leaking the identities of assets.
        nitrogen 10y ago
        IIRC Wikileaks asked for assistance redacting the leak and did not receive any.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - jomamaxx 10y ago
        "and successfully liberated far more of the data belonging to the public." This is completely false. The information Manning released absolutely did not belong in the public domain. Period. Governments, like any other private entity are allowed to keep confidential information. Much of what manning released was private conversations between state department officials and their counterparts in the Middle East. The damage could have been much worse. It's really sad to see so manny people think that 'individual privacy is paramount' but then can't grasp that other actors, including state actors, don't have reasonable rights to privacy. It's beyond naive.
        judemelancon 10y ago
        Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities.
        jomamaxx 10y ago
        "Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities." Governments are not 'private entities' but they certainly can have 'private information'. It's really quite difficult to debate this with you guys. If you can't imagine that diplomats can't have private conversations with their counter parts, that bureaucrats can't have private conversations with employees - then I have nothing to say to you. Once you accept that there is a lot of information that should not be publicly available, both 'secret' and 'mundane' (HR records etc..) - then you accept the government can keep private information - and then it becomes a matter of how that is regulated: oversight by congress, committee, judiciary - and access to information wherein it's appropriate. And once you accept that - you accept that Manning's release was totally immoral and unlawful. There is nothing in his cable releases that should have been released - though you could debate the release of the video of reporters dying in friendly fire.
        jMyles 10y ago
        > If you can't imagine that diplomats can't have private conversations with their counter parts, that bureaucrats can't have private conversations with employees - then I have nothing to say to you. Just to be clear: I think many people here believe that "diplomats" and "bureaucrats" are subject to deprecation. You are holding on to the notion that the government is going to keep existing (and bungling society, economy, and environment) alongside the internet, but it's perfectly reasonable to surmise that this is not so. Government has been a necessary evil for a stage of human evolution that is now coming to a close. And it will wither with a whimper, not a bang. So, per your directive, it may just be that you have nothing to say to us.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Chelsea Manning took vast numbers of documents she never read and then sent them to a stranger on the Internet who happened to have branding congenial to her politics. I think the handling of the Snowden leak was also irresponsible and, from the vantage point of doing the most public good with the disclosure, has for the most part been a fiasco (notice how much more we learn about the contents of these documents after attacks and incidents become public?). But Snowden's leak handling was surgical compared to the shitshow surrounding the Manning leak.
        thoughtifnot 10y ago
        Yes, and; while Snowden gives conference talks from exile, she's facing charges and indefinite solitary confinement as punishment for a suicide attempt. Naive and misguided, perhaps, but you really can't argue she didn't risk (and lose) far more while basically trying to do the right thing.
        tptacek 10y ago
        People who bomb abortion clinics also believe they're doing the right thing. We need to be careful about judging actions solely by motivations.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > People who bomb abortion clinics also believe they're doing the right thing. We need to be careful about judging actions solely by motivations. The second sentence may not be true, but is unrelated to the first, which illustrates more that we need to be careful about judging actions solely by accord with the alignment to the actors' view of "the right thing" than anything else.
        thoughtifnot 10y ago
        If we lived in the same moral universe as them, they would be doing the right thing. The thought does give me pause, from time to time. But the point is not to redeem Manning's actions in a utilitarian sense. The facts are that she saw something (war) she found unconscionable, she wanted to do something about it, and she sacrificed about as much as she possibly could without dying-- maybe more, now that she's one of the least free people on the planet. It's not that hard to comprehend a moral philosophy where she does actually deserve points for effort. If you're asking me to just look at utility, it's very hard for me to get around the fact that the book is still being written. I can see the argument that indiscriminate leaking causes damage, and damage to well-functioning systems is bad, but I can also see the argument that the historical record is full of state secrets kept for banal or evil reasons and the proper functioning of the current intelligence apparatus may be doing more harm in a human sense than could possibly be justified, if we just knew it were happening. The irony is that ultimately, I just have to trust that there are enough people with good hearts working in the system that if something unconscionable is going on, it won't stay secret for long. So in these circumstances I'm actually much more worried about not judging by intentions enough, lest the well-intentioned decide to stay home.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    I assert that, whether someone agrees or not, Snowden was doing something that was actually right.
    - tombert 10y ago
      I don't disagree, but I know that the issue is divisive; my point is that his intentions were clearly pure regardless.
      - jMyles 10y ago
        Yeah yeah, absolutely I agree. I'm also saying that (or at least putting the idea out to test drive it) it's a good time for us to shift our language to talk about things that, in some deeper way, are politically and civically just.
      - jomamaxx 10y ago
        "my point is that his intentions were clearly pure regardless." I would tend to concur, but we don't know that. Also - intentions are not that important. Manning's motivations I surmise were probably innocent, but his incredible naivte of releasing gigabytes of information of information when he didn't even know what the contents were ... were seriously damaging. Tons of undredacted cables in there meaning a number of Afghan and Iraqi citizens helping the US were needlessly put at risk, for example.
        jMyles 10y ago
        Listen, I don't mean to dismiss the kind of sober thinking you are putting forward here. There is a reality to these sorts of actions that, for the perhaps most optimistic or utopian among us, bears repeating mention of. However, this: > Tons of undredacted cables in there meaning a number of Afghan and Iraqi citizens helping the US were needlessly put at risk, for example. ...reads to me like a celebration of opposite day in the bizarro world. Manning did nothing to put these people at risk; the state put them at risk with its murderous and greedy tendencies and foreign policy errors. Announcing someone's name and affiliations, in the case of a decent, non-violent, dare I say "everyday" person does not in any way put them at risk. It is only because these people are touched by the long finger of empire that the appearance of their name in a text file is compiled into danger. Manning's heroism tends toward ending that empire and making these people (and those in a similar role in generations to come) safer and freer.
  - progressive_dad 10y 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-hellish-vision-of-the-future-is-better-than-yours.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/huxley-to-orwell-my-helli...
- mst 10y 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.
  - drvdevd 10y ago
    Brilliant. I believe from this vantage the whole situation becomes much less clear which is of course very interesting.
- DigitalJack 10y 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.
- dang 10y ago
  Ok, we s/Snowden/leaker/'d the title in the hope of making it a little more neutral.
  - Bud 10y ago
    Not sure how that helps, since the real article still bears its original title. How does it help to misrepresent the actual article?
    - dang 10y ago
      When an article's title is misleading or linkbait, the HN guidelines call for it to be changed. Alas we can do nothing about misleading titles in the big wide world, but we can at least tend to our little corner of the internet.
    - colechristensen 10y ago
      Removing the clickbait title from an article that is otherwise valuable is a good thing.
okket 10y ago
Edit: Apparently somebody agreed and removed the clickbaity 'Snowden' from the title. Thanks.
- DanHulton 10y 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.
  - drvdevd 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
    I view your thought process as how 'group think' and 'reddit culture' starts to permeate HN
    - mst 10y ago
      I think that would be 'instead' rather than 'before'.
dredmorbius 10y 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.
- nxzero 10y 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 10y 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.
  - user731955373 10y ago
    http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2015/05/20/snowdens-global-impact/ 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-tech-firms-study http://www.securityweek.com/snowden-revelations-costly-us-te...
John23832 10y 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 10y ago
  Also is the narrative that its a state sponsored hacker vs a russia-based hacktivist?
- silvestrov 10y 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.
  - John23832 10y ago
    I think you agreed with me.
- gremlinsinc 10y 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.
nxzero 10y ago
Anyone that expects anything related to "intelligence" to have logical explanations might very easily find themselves chasing tails.
- drvdevd 10y 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.
  - ihaveahadron 10y ago
    The fake chinese/foreign English I thought was particularly amusing.
the_wumpus 10y ago
One hundred Royal Zorkmids for the title author!
advisedwang 10y ago
It seems likely (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_us.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_...) that there are actually quite a few whistleblowers/leakers out there.
PieterH 10y ago
As soon as the author began referencing Applebaum seriously, the article lost most of its credibility.
- ryanlol 10y ago
  I'm curious, why? Is it because of the recent sexual misconduct allegations or something else?
  - jlappi 10y 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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mst 10y ago
  I dunno, Applebaum might've been an epic plagiarist, but the work he was trying to take credit for was often solid.
  - PieterH 10y 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.
    - psykpsyk 10y ago
      The article explicitly says the "most dangerous man in the world" line is from a Rolling Stone article. If anyone did "garbage journalism", as you insinuate, was Rolling Stone, not Reuters or Bamford. Why are you trying to fool the other fools in here who haven't attentively read the article? Do you work for the US government, or do you have any other agenda? Maybe you have some grudge about Appelbaum itself?
silvestrov 10y 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 https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/765785340892372992
- AceJohnny2 10y 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?
  - silvestrov 10y 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-Congress-over-iPhone-data-6864178.php http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Apple-FBI-face-off-in-C...
    - unfamiliar 10y ago
      > When the back door is created, it cannot be destroyed. If the "backdoor" in question is a malicious signed OS update, then it can absolutely be destroyed. There are plenty of reasons to avoid backdoors without imbuing them with mystical qualities like the inability to delete them.
      - 10y ago
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ihaveahadron 10y ago
What if the tools are actually outdated, and its the NSA selling them themselves to raise money?
sickbeard 10y ago
Isn't this the reason why governments react harshly to people like Snowden and Manning? To discourage even worse breaches?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- matt_wulfeck 10y 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?
  - sickbeard 10y ago
    Compared to past infractions Snowden has gotten off relatively easy
    - paulmd 10y ago
      Largely because Snowden is outside the political reach of the US for the moment, and the USG realizes it would be counterproductive to throw a public temper tantrum about it. If he hadn't fled it's quite likely he would have faced the same kind of treatment as Thomas Drake and William Binney, if not harsher.
      - dghughes 10y ago
        > Thomas Drake and William Binney Someone should write a book or make a movie about those two men the modern equivalent of All the President's Men.
tptacek 10y 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 10y 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.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    "The NSA is impenetrable" is not and was not the prevailing narrative, to say the least.
    - Coding_Cat 10y ago
      Not on here at least. I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the population still believed it though.
      - 10y ago
Aelinsaar 10y 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!
progressive_dad 10y ago
Hitler gassed the jews, Saddam gassed the kurds, and one time Snowden farted in church. SAME THING tombert. SAME THING.
- IntelMiner 10y ago
  No, it really isn't
  - progressive_dad 10y ago
    If you're Reuters and paid to gas-light the American people it is.
- hooph00p 10y ago
  You have nothing to add to this discussion. Please take this rhetoric elsewhere.
  - progressive_dad 10y ago
    This article falsely equates selling NSA tools on the black market with government whistleblowing. Let's not get on a high horse about rhetoric in the comments?
    - kbenson 10y ago
      It's the delivery, not the message. You tried to use sarcasm in a forum where it can't be too subtle to work (also, Poe's law is alive and well here). I imagine you would have received multiple upvotes instead of downvotes if you had taken a different approach.
      - progressive_dad 10y ago
        Point well taken. Imagining Edward Snowden as my playful pathetic little brachiocephalic puppy dog stinking up his pew and being swatted on the nose with NEWSPAPER just made me giggle. I'll keep my GAS-lighting jokes to myself. Especially when it comes to LEAKING sensitive material...
SixSigma 10y 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.
- swang 10y 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.
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    That's my point. I'm not asserting anything except don't take any assertions at face value.
    - swang 10y ago
      fair enough. the way you worded your post makes it hard to tell whether you're saying these conspiracies/theories are true.
- mamon 10y 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.
bronz 10y ago
i dont understand why the highest bid in the shadow brokers auction is less than a thousand dollars
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Highest bid? More like all the bids, combined.
- wongarsu 10y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction (Dollar auctions are a two-player example of Tullock auctions)
zmanian 10y 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 10y ago
  Or a third possibility: This is a deliberate release for propaganda purposes (more funding, dis-information, etc.)
justcommenting 10y 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-giveaway/ https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/75812/the-equation-giv... [1] http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/12661/what-could-look-for-the-constants-that-you-might-find-in-rc6-mean http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/12661/what-could-l... [2] http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/jacob-appelbaum-30c3-protect-infect-militarization-internet-transcript.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/jacob-appelbaum-30c3-...
redwards510 10y 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.
- etjossem 10y 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 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765515087062982656
atmosx 10y 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 10y ago
The article sort of makes fun of the hackers writing, then immediately writes "loosing" instead of "losing".
partycoder 10y ago
Or probably it's information intoxication (leaking fake information)
grandalf 10y 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 10y 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
- tptacek 10y ago
  It's an op-ed.
return0 10y ago
Why don't we have widespread use of tools that spoof online activity ?
godgod 10y ago
Why do we have a government that feels it's entitled to access all our our private things?
bogomipz 10y 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?

378 points by mudil 10y ago

adamc 10y 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.)

tombert 10y 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 10y 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.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    Chelsea Manning risked even more, was rewarded far less, and successfully liberated far more of the data belonging to the public. Very little of what she revealed passes any sort of common sense test about what is rightly held secret by a public entity, but rather showed that the government keeps secret anything that is politically dangerous for the narrative it tries to maintain. I see nothing but good intentions. Forward-thinking? Maybe you're right there, at least in terms of her own well-being. Perhaps she was counting on us for more than we're willing to do in terms of rescuing her from a life of torture at the hands of the state.
    - imglorp 10y ago
      Regarding selective disclosure, at least Snowden and Greenwald made an attempt to keep people from getting killed. There's a big difference between leaking methods and leaking the identities of assets.
      - nitrogen 10y ago
        IIRC Wikileaks asked for assistance redacting the leak and did not receive any.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      "and successfully liberated far more of the data belonging to the public." This is completely false. The information Manning released absolutely did not belong in the public domain. Period. Governments, like any other private entity are allowed to keep confidential information. Much of what manning released was private conversations between state department officials and their counterparts in the Middle East. The damage could have been much worse. It's really sad to see so manny people think that 'individual privacy is paramount' but then can't grasp that other actors, including state actors, don't have reasonable rights to privacy. It's beyond naive.
      - judemelancon 10y ago
        Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities.
        jomamaxx 10y ago
        "Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities." Governments are not 'private entities' but they certainly can have 'private information'. It's really quite difficult to debate this with you guys. If you can't imagine that diplomats can't have private conversations with their counter parts, that bureaucrats can't have private conversations with employees - then I have nothing to say to you. Once you accept that there is a lot of information that should not be publicly available, both 'secret' and 'mundane' (HR records etc..) - then you accept the government can keep private information - and then it becomes a matter of how that is regulated: oversight by congress, committee, judiciary - and access to information wherein it's appropriate. And once you accept that - you accept that Manning's release was totally immoral and unlawful. There is nothing in his cable releases that should have been released - though you could debate the release of the video of reporters dying in friendly fire.
        jMyles 10y ago
        > If you can't imagine that diplomats can't have private conversations with their counter parts, that bureaucrats can't have private conversations with employees - then I have nothing to say to you. Just to be clear: I think many people here believe that "diplomats" and "bureaucrats" are subject to deprecation. You are holding on to the notion that the government is going to keep existing (and bungling society, economy, and environment) alongside the internet, but it's perfectly reasonable to surmise that this is not so. Government has been a necessary evil for a stage of human evolution that is now coming to a close. And it will wither with a whimper, not a bang. So, per your directive, it may just be that you have nothing to say to us.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Chelsea Manning took vast numbers of documents she never read and then sent them to a stranger on the Internet who happened to have branding congenial to her politics. I think the handling of the Snowden leak was also irresponsible and, from the vantage point of doing the most public good with the disclosure, has for the most part been a fiasco (notice how much more we learn about the contents of these documents after attacks and incidents become public?). But Snowden's leak handling was surgical compared to the shitshow surrounding the Manning leak.
      - thoughtifnot 10y ago
        Yes, and; while Snowden gives conference talks from exile, she's facing charges and indefinite solitary confinement as punishment for a suicide attempt. Naive and misguided, perhaps, but you really can't argue she didn't risk (and lose) far more while basically trying to do the right thing.
        tptacek 10y ago
        People who bomb abortion clinics also believe they're doing the right thing. We need to be careful about judging actions solely by motivations.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > People who bomb abortion clinics also believe they're doing the right thing. We need to be careful about judging actions solely by motivations. The second sentence may not be true, but is unrelated to the first, which illustrates more that we need to be careful about judging actions solely by accord with the alignment to the actors' view of "the right thing" than anything else.
        thoughtifnot 10y ago
        If we lived in the same moral universe as them, they would be doing the right thing. The thought does give me pause, from time to time. But the point is not to redeem Manning's actions in a utilitarian sense. The facts are that she saw something (war) she found unconscionable, she wanted to do something about it, and she sacrificed about as much as she possibly could without dying-- maybe more, now that she's one of the least free people on the planet. It's not that hard to comprehend a moral philosophy where she does actually deserve points for effort. If you're asking me to just look at utility, it's very hard for me to get around the fact that the book is still being written. I can see the argument that indiscriminate leaking causes damage, and damage to well-functioning systems is bad, but I can also see the argument that the historical record is full of state secrets kept for banal or evil reasons and the proper functioning of the current intelligence apparatus may be doing more harm in a human sense than could possibly be justified, if we just knew it were happening. The irony is that ultimately, I just have to trust that there are enough people with good hearts working in the system that if something unconscionable is going on, it won't stay secret for long. So in these circumstances I'm actually much more worried about not judging by intentions enough, lest the well-intentioned decide to stay home.
- jMyles 10y ago
  I assert that, whether someone agrees or not, Snowden was doing something that was actually right.
  - tombert 10y ago
    I don't disagree, but I know that the issue is divisive; my point is that his intentions were clearly pure regardless.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      Yeah yeah, absolutely I agree. I'm also saying that (or at least putting the idea out to test drive it) it's a good time for us to shift our language to talk about things that, in some deeper way, are politically and civically just.
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      "my point is that his intentions were clearly pure regardless." I would tend to concur, but we don't know that. Also - intentions are not that important. Manning's motivations I surmise were probably innocent, but his incredible naivte of releasing gigabytes of information of information when he didn't even know what the contents were ... were seriously damaging. Tons of undredacted cables in there meaning a number of Afghan and Iraqi citizens helping the US were needlessly put at risk, for example.
      - jMyles 10y ago
        Listen, I don't mean to dismiss the kind of sober thinking you are putting forward here. There is a reality to these sorts of actions that, for the perhaps most optimistic or utopian among us, bears repeating mention of. However, this: > Tons of undredacted cables in there meaning a number of Afghan and Iraqi citizens helping the US were needlessly put at risk, for example. ...reads to me like a celebration of opposite day in the bizarro world. Manning did nothing to put these people at risk; the state put them at risk with its murderous and greedy tendencies and foreign policy errors. Announcing someone's name and affiliations, in the case of a decent, non-violent, dare I say "everyday" person does not in any way put them at risk. It is only because these people are touched by the long finger of empire that the appearance of their name in a text file is compiled into danger. Manning's heroism tends toward ending that empire and making these people (and those in a similar role in generations to come) safer and freer.
- progressive_dad 10y 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-hellish-vision-of-the-future-is-better-than-yours.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/huxley-to-orwell-my-helli...
mst 10y 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.
- drvdevd 10y ago
  Brilliant. I believe from this vantage the whole situation becomes much less clear which is of course very interesting.
DigitalJack 10y 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.
dang 10y ago
Ok, we s/Snowden/leaker/'d the title in the hope of making it a little more neutral.
- Bud 10y ago
  Not sure how that helps, since the real article still bears its original title. How does it help to misrepresent the actual article?
  - dang 10y ago
    When an article's title is misleading or linkbait, the HN guidelines call for it to be changed. Alas we can do nothing about misleading titles in the big wide world, but we can at least tend to our little corner of the internet.
  - colechristensen 10y ago
    Removing the clickbait title from an article that is otherwise valuable is a good thing.

okket 10y ago

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

DanHulton 10y 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.
- drvdevd 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
  I view your thought process as how 'group think' and 'reddit culture' starts to permeate HN
  - mst 10y ago
    I think that would be 'instead' rather than 'before'.

dredmorbius 10y 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.

nxzero 10y 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 10y 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.
- user731955373 10y ago
  http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2015/05/20/snowdens-global-impact/ 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-tech-firms-study http://www.securityweek.com/snowden-revelations-costly-us-te...

John23832 10y 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 10y ago
Also is the narrative that its a state sponsored hacker vs a russia-based hacktivist?
silvestrov 10y 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.
- John23832 10y ago
  I think you agreed with me.
gremlinsinc 10y 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.

nxzero 10y ago

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

drvdevd 10y 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.
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  The fake chinese/foreign English I thought was particularly amusing.

the_wumpus 10y ago

One hundred Royal Zorkmids for the title author!

advisedwang 10y ago

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

PieterH 10y ago

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

ryanlol 10y ago
I'm curious, why? Is it because of the recent sexual misconduct allegations or something else?
- jlappi 10y 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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mst 10y ago
I dunno, Applebaum might've been an epic plagiarist, but the work he was trying to take credit for was often solid.
- PieterH 10y 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.
  - psykpsyk 10y ago
    The article explicitly says the "most dangerous man in the world" line is from a Rolling Stone article. If anyone did "garbage journalism", as you insinuate, was Rolling Stone, not Reuters or Bamford. Why are you trying to fool the other fools in here who haven't attentively read the article? Do you work for the US government, or do you have any other agenda? Maybe you have some grudge about Appelbaum itself?

silvestrov 10y 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 https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/765785340892372992

AceJohnny2 10y 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?
- silvestrov 10y 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-Congress-over-iPhone-data-6864178.php http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Apple-FBI-face-off-in-C...
  - unfamiliar 10y ago
    > When the back door is created, it cannot be destroyed. If the "backdoor" in question is a malicious signed OS update, then it can absolutely be destroyed. There are plenty of reasons to avoid backdoors without imbuing them with mystical qualities like the inability to delete them.
    - 10y ago

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ihaveahadron 10y ago

What if the tools are actually outdated, and its the NSA selling them themselves to raise money?

sickbeard 10y ago

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

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
matt_wulfeck 10y 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?
- sickbeard 10y ago
  Compared to past infractions Snowden has gotten off relatively easy
  - paulmd 10y ago
    Largely because Snowden is outside the political reach of the US for the moment, and the USG realizes it would be counterproductive to throw a public temper tantrum about it. If he hadn't fled it's quite likely he would have faced the same kind of treatment as Thomas Drake and William Binney, if not harsher.
    - dghughes 10y ago
      > Thomas Drake and William Binney Someone should write a book or make a movie about those two men the modern equivalent of All the President's Men.

tptacek 10y 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 10y 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.
- tptacek 10y ago
  "The NSA is impenetrable" is not and was not the prevailing narrative, to say the least.
  - Coding_Cat 10y ago
    Not on here at least. I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the population still believed it though.
    - 10y ago

Aelinsaar 10y 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!

progressive_dad 10y ago

Hitler gassed the jews, Saddam gassed the kurds, and one time Snowden farted in church. SAME THING tombert. SAME THING.

IntelMiner 10y ago
No, it really isn't
- progressive_dad 10y ago
  If you're Reuters and paid to gas-light the American people it is.
hooph00p 10y ago
You have nothing to add to this discussion. Please take this rhetoric elsewhere.
- progressive_dad 10y ago
  This article falsely equates selling NSA tools on the black market with government whistleblowing. Let's not get on a high horse about rhetoric in the comments?
  - kbenson 10y ago
    It's the delivery, not the message. You tried to use sarcasm in a forum where it can't be too subtle to work (also, Poe's law is alive and well here). I imagine you would have received multiple upvotes instead of downvotes if you had taken a different approach.
    - progressive_dad 10y ago
      Point well taken. Imagining Edward Snowden as my playful pathetic little brachiocephalic puppy dog stinking up his pew and being swatted on the nose with NEWSPAPER just made me giggle. I'll keep my GAS-lighting jokes to myself. Especially when it comes to LEAKING sensitive material...

SixSigma 10y 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.

swang 10y 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.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  That's my point. I'm not asserting anything except don't take any assertions at face value.
  - swang 10y ago
    fair enough. the way you worded your post makes it hard to tell whether you're saying these conspiracies/theories are true.
mamon 10y 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.

bronz 10y ago

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

bdcravens 10y ago
Highest bid? More like all the bids, combined.
wongarsu 10y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction (Dollar auctions are a two-player example of Tullock auctions)

zmanian 10y 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 10y ago
Or a third possibility: This is a deliberate release for propaganda purposes (more funding, dis-information, etc.)

justcommenting 10y 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-giveaway/ https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/75812/the-equation-giv... [1] http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/12661/what-could-look-for-the-constants-that-you-might-find-in-rc6-mean http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/12661/what-could-l... [2] http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/jacob-appelbaum-30c3-protect-infect-militarization-internet-transcript.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/jacob-appelbaum-30c3-...

redwards510 10y 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.

etjossem 10y 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 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765515087062982656

atmosx 10y 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 10y ago

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

partycoder 10y ago

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

grandalf 10y 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 10y 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

tptacek 10y ago
It's an op-ed.

return0 10y ago

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

godgod 10y ago

Why do we have a government that feels it's entitled to access all our our private things?

bogomipz 10y 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?