Last August, an unknown group called the Shadow Brokers released a bunch of NSA tools to the public. The common guesses were that the tools were discovered on an external staging server, and that the hack and release was the work of the Russians (back then, that wasn't controversial). This was me:
Okay, so let's think about the game theory here. Some group stole all of this data in 2013 and kept it secret for three years. Now they want the world to know it was stolen. Which governments might behave this way? The obvious list is short: China and Russia. Were I betting, I would bet Russia, and that it's a signal to the Obama Administration: "Before you even think of sanctioning us for the DNC hack, know where we've been and what we can do to you."
They published a second, encrypted, file. My speculation:
They claim to be auctioning off the rest of the data to the highest bidder. I think that's PR nonsense. More likely, that second file is random nonsense, and this is all we're going to get. It's a lot, though.
I was wrong. On November 1, the Shadow Brokers released some more documents, and two days ago they released the key to that original encrypted archive:
EQGRP-Auction-Files is CrDj"(;Va.*NdlnzB9M?@K2)#>deB7mN
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:04PM (1 child)
What if the US government signal is communicating with Russia? (grin)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:21PM
What if the US government signal is communicating with Russia? (grin)
I guarantee that such communications routinely exist and are routinely encrypted. Its SOP since the Eisenhower administration.
Was there an actual point you were trying to make?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.