Crackers cracked?

Robert

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Might be a hoax but, if not, looks juicy:

an anonymous group has published what it claims are sophisticated software tools belonging to an elite team of hackers tied to the US National Security Agency.

Link to cached page:
https://webcache.googleusercontent....brokers.tumblr.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

snippet:
!!! Attention government sponsors of cyber warfare and those who profit from it !!!!

How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? Not malware you find in networks. Both sides, RAT + LP, full state sponsor tool set? We find cyber weapons made by creators of stuxnet, duqu, flame. Kaspersky calls Equation Group. We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files.

Story from Ars.
 

FluffyMcDeath

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What if it's the NSA dumping old stock and keeping adversaries distracted figuring out exploits it doesn't use any more.
The craft is full of deception - that's what makes it the craft.
 
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Robert

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What if it's the NSA dumping old stock and keeping adversaries distracted figuring out exploits it doesn't use any more.
The craft is full of deception - that's what makes it the craft.

Could be.
The language used certainly smacks of someone pretending to be someone for whom English is not a first language, rather than someone genuinely struggling with English.
How many layers of deception even there? :)


Meanwhile, Cisco confirm some of the vulnerabilities.
 

Robert

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Kaspersky blew whistle on NSA hacking tool hoarder
Kaspersky passed suspicious Twitter messages from Martin to US government.

Harold T. Martin III, a former government contractor, is still facing trial for the alleged theft of massive amounts of National Security Agency data, including documents and tools from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations Division. Now, a new report by Kim Zetter for Politico suggests that the NSA and the Justice Department tracked down Martin thanks to information shared by an ironic source: the Moscow-based malware protection company Kaspersky Lab. Citing two anonymous sources familiar with the investigation, Zetter reports that Kaspersky Lab employees passed information on Martin to the US government after he sent unusual direct messages via Twitter to the company in 2016.

Kaspersky passed the US government five messages from an anonymous Twitter account named @HAL999999999 to two researchers at the company. The first message, sent August 15, 2016, requested that a researcher facilitate a conversation with "Yevgeny," the given name of Kaspersky Lab founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky. "So, figure out how we talk... With Yevgeny present," the message read. The second message: "Shelf life, three weeks."

The messages came just 30 minutes before someone calling themselves Shadow Brokers dumped a link to a collection of NSA tools in a Tumblr post and announced additional tools would be auctioned off for 1 million Bitcoin.

After responding to the messages, both Kaspersky researchers were promptly blocked by the @HAL999999999 account, according to Politico's sources. Analysis of the account by Kaspersky researchers linked it to Martin and work he did for the US intelligence community. That prompted Kaspersky employees to reach out to the NSA, as they believed it might be connected to the Shadow Brokers case.
 
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