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posted by on Tuesday February 07 2017, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-borrowed-for-a-while dept.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported one of the most stunning breaches of security ever. A former NSA contractor, the paper said, stole more than 50 terabytes of highly sensitive data. According to one source, that includes more than 75 percent of the hacking tools belonging to the Tailored Access Operations. TAO is an elite hacking unit that develops and deploys some of the world's most sophisticated software exploits.

Attorneys representing Harold T. Martin III have previously portrayed the former NSA contractor as a patriot who took NSA materials home so that he could become better at his job. Meanwhile, investigators who have combed through his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland, remain concerned that he passed the weaponized hacking tools to enemies. The theft came to light during the investigation of a series of NSA-developed exploits that were mysteriously published online by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.

[...] An unnamed US official told the paper that Martin allegedly hoarded more than 75 percent of the TAO's library of hacking tools. It's hard to envision a scenario under which a theft of that much classified material by a single individual would be possible.

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/former-nsa-contractor-may-have-stolen-75-of-taos-elite-hacking-tools/


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Wednesday February 08 2017, @01:49AM

    by driverless (4770) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @01:49AM (#464402)

    Didn't we do this one a couple of months ago? The govt is telling us that he may possibly have stolen XYZ, allegedly killed Jimmy Hoffa, and is rumoured to have caused the GFC. If you look at what he actually, provably did, it's that he took some stuff home that he shouldn't have while in all other aspects being a patriotic citizen. Since it looks like the govt is going to have a tough time throwing the book at him as they'd like to, every month or two we get another planted story telling us that he's secretly Doctor Doom, Lex Luthor, and Galactus rolled into one. With all claims prefixed by "allegedly", "apparently", and "may have", sourced to "unnamed officials".

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