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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: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:54PM
"Doesn't the NSA and other TLAs have opposing objectives?"
If only it were as simple as them doing their jobs.
They are also competing for funding. The bigger their cut of the taxpayer-funded pie, the more each agency can advance their own interests and "create demand" for their security services around the globe.
OT:
It's really interesting to see how the regime change is totally fucking with each agency's projected game plan, at least, it was for the past couple months. Now the MIC may have begun to regain control, but I'm still withholding opinions on the whole Syria thing. The dust has not nearly settled, yet MSM wants to say they can see clear paths to the future through the dustcloud as they spiral into irrelevance. Taking in their "reporting" is like drinking salt water.