The fifth NSA whistleblower, or the second Snowden if you prefer, has disappeared without trace as far as my limited Google-fu can tell. The raid reported in the link was conducted by the FBI in late October, but there has been no reporting since of what they found or any subsequent arrests. Is anyone in Soylent-world more aware of what's going on in this case?
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RT is reporting that the FBI have raided the home of a second Intelligence Agency whistleblower.
Investigators recently raided the home of the individual, according to a report published on Monday this week by journalist Michael Isikoff. They had a federal warrant to identify the source of classified documents recently published by The Intercept.
The Intercept was founded to continue reporting on information provided by Snowden, and to provide aggressive and independent adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues, from secrecy, criminal and civil justice abuses and civil liberties violations to media conduct, societal inequality and all forms of financial and political corruption. The editors include Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, key journalists involved in the original Snowden reporting.
Also reported at Business Insider and The Verge .
Cisco is releasing patches for an exploit disclosed by an entity calling itself the Shadow Brokers:
Cisco Systems has started releasing security patches for a critical flaw in Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewalls targeted by an exploit linked to the U.S. National Security Agency. The exploit, dubbed ExtraBacon, is one of the tools used by a group that the security industry calls the Equation, believed to be a cyberespionage team tied to the NSA.
ExtraBacon was released earlier this month together with other exploits by one or more individuals who use the name Shadow Brokers. The files were provided as a sample of a larger Equation group toolset the Shadow Brokers outfit has put up for auction.
[...] There is a second Equation exploit in the Shadow Brokers leak that targets ASA software. It is called EpicBanana and exploits a vulnerability that Cisco claims was patched back in 2011 in version 8.4(3). Nevertheless, the company published a new advisory for the flaw in order to increase its visibility. A third exploit, BenignCertain, affects legacy Cisco PIX firewalls that are no longer supported. Cisco investigated the exploit and said only versions 6.x and earlier of the PIX software are affected. Users who still have such devices on their networks should make sure they're running software versions 7.0 and later, which are not affected.
There is speculation that the hacks are actually leaks from a "second (third?) Snowden". A linguistic analysis of the "broken English" used by the Shadow Brokers determined that the text was written by someone pretending to not know English.
Previously:
"The Shadow Brokers" Claim to Have Hacked NSA
NSA 'Shadow Brokers' Hack Shows SpyWar With Kremlin is Turning Hot
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday December 06 2014, @02:31PM
Oct 28th was the latest anything has been said about the second leaker.
The “second source” for Snowden reporters, explained [washingtonpost.com]
Yet more NSA officials whisper of an internal revolt over US spying. And yet it still goes on [theregister.co.uk]
None of the recent stories involved the second leaker as far as we know:
Operation Auroragold story was from Snowden [firstlook.org]
Submarine cables list was from Snowden [theregister.co.uk]
Regin malware story didn't involve Snowden [firstlook.org]
Copenhagen spying was from Snowden [firstlook.org]
Vodafone surveillance was from Snowden [firstlook.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday December 06 2014, @11:35PM
Obviously, the person is a terrorist, hell-bent on destroying the very fabric holding America together.
Fortunately, the President has the right to secretly detain and remove people like this from American soil so they can be properly dealt with without being fettered by those pesky 'rights' [human, Constitutional, or any other type].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 06 2014, @02:40PM
I will say, however, that I saw him on a grassy knoll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 06 2014, @03:11PM
That grassy knoll is the only spot of grass in the third-world desert shithole where the second leaker had probably been extraordinarily rendered for enhanced debriefing. When you dick over the the Five Eyes international conspiracy (doing your country a favor) and subsequently disappear, conspiracy theories surrounding your location are not so crazy...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cafebabe on Saturday December 06 2014, @06:21PM
I hope that the Second Snowden is a ruse or a dis-information campaign. If not, someone is dead or in a really nasty situation.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2, Insightful) by gumby on Saturday December 06 2014, @06:30PM
Sadly I have to agree. Most likely he or she is naked in solitary in a supermax, no trial, no contact except with their torturers.
It's pretty terrible that the country has gotten to the point where you can believe such a thing without discussing it as a conspiracy theory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 07 2014, @03:44PM
It's pretty terrible that your nihilism has gotten to the point that anything you can't believe you attribute to imagined "supermax" and such being tortured. Do you think some muscled toga wearing guy is throwing lightning bolts at you during a thunderstorm? It is as terrible as it is and the threat to you has grown so much so in the same manner that the suburban housewife knows how terrible child abductions have become and how it is now so much a constant danger that one shouldn't let their children play outside out of eyesight. Some people think gay people and gay marriage is a terrible danger to society because not only are these people disgusting, but other people might catch "gay" from them.
There should be a network dedicated to this world view along side Fox News. Then one could just flip back and forth between the two channels to get all their news and opinion and they can sit content in their anger and paranoia and never leave the house.
For what it is worth, when they catch spies they make a big deal of it to both highlight the danger they pose as well as showing that they are doing their job. They don't want to disclose what was revealed. Eventually it even filters down as case examples into the the various security refreshers and training that people have to take.
(Score: 1) by gumby on Monday December 08 2014, @01:28AM
You know, AC, I used to share your viewpoint. When the first high profile prisoner in Abu Graib died, and the US was blamed, I was sure it was a dreadful coincidence. Other regimes would torture a prisoner to death, but surely not the US. As a matter of state policy they didn't even do it in WWII[*]
But since learning what happened there, and about the black site renditions, and the punitive treatment of Chelsea Manning and other whistleblowers (not to mention the continued use of the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay) it's become hard to believe that these guys are really on our side.
And I would agree that normally "when they catch spies they make a big deal of it". But in this case there was a publicized raid and then... silence. If they had raided the wrong person, that person would be making a public stink. But instead, nothing. This kind of silence is even scarier, as plenty of regimes in history have already shown.
[*] People aren't saints and plenty of atrocities happened on all sides in WWII. But for the US in the 20th century I believe they were "retail". It seems that in the 21st century they have gone back to wholesale abuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 07 2014, @04:02AM
Or hiding. Or a hermit. Or died of natural causes at a time inconvenient for others, darn selfish #%&*@#%
(Score: 4, Insightful) by novak on Saturday December 06 2014, @06:44PM
At this point, it seems safe to say he is deep inside The Ministry of Love.
novak