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>According to three former N.S.A. operators who spoke on the condition of anonymity, analysts spent almost a year finding a flaw in Microsoft’s software and wri
by Thorrez 7y ago
>According to three former N.S.A. operators who spoke on the condition of anonymity, analysts spent almost a year finding a flaw in Microsoft’s software and writing the code to target it. Initially, they referred to it as EternalBluescreen because it often crashed computers — a risk that could tip off their targets. But it went on to become a reliable tool used in countless intelligence-gathering and counterterrorism missions.
If it took the NSA a year to develop, then it can't be done "on a slow day".
- tptacek 7y agoI didn't say it could be done "on a slow day". I said it could be done "out of petty cash", in the context of a SIGINT agency. Google employs dozens of people who do this stuff as a hobby. We don't have to wonder whether this is some space alien technology that only the NSA can develop; it's a reliable Windows remote in pre-Win8 SMB servers. Read a writeup on it; it's less complicated than most type confusion browser RCEs.
- dtornabene 7y agofair enough, my language, not yours. I was driving at a similar point however inept my language was.
- tptacek 7y agoI don't object to your language as a rhetorical flourish, because I think it's true that this level of exploit development is not all that rarified. I'm just saying, what I actually said is harder to knock down with a message board rebuttal. :)