Hackers claim to have stolen NSA cyberweapons, auctioning them to highest bidder

boing
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Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/16/hackers-claim-to-have-stolen-n.html
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This can’t be, because the NSA sitting on a bunch of unpatched zeros-days actually makes us safer.

At least that’s what I’ve been told.

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Seeing as this is likely to be yet another Bitcoin scam operation, I’m not worried.

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OK, could it also be the NSA posing as hackers, offering to sell exploits to see who bites?

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someone played with the test-before-buy exploit - that one is working

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Hopefully the samples released will be quickly used to patch these vulnerabilities.

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What a bunch of morons.

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Researchers at Defcon think they’re only sitting on a few, at any given time, actually.

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The irony…if it’s true that is.

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I don’t doubt there might be a valid exploit tossed in, but I’m still a bit suspicious regarding the validity of the whole package.

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Wow, let me guess, Assange got them from “Russian hackers”.

Quelle surprise!

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If this is a hoax, the perpetrators put a huge amount of effort in…

They didn’t even bother to sound like Russians. That text sounds like an American faking a poor Russian acccent. Is good wery good! Horosho! You send Bitcoin!

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More proof that Hillary should have used a government e-mail server to prevent hackers.

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Isn’t that their whole business model?

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I’ve met plenty of Russians. Educated ones are generally capable of producing very good English especially if the subject is technical. Outside the Anglosphere speaking another foreign language well is not uncommon.

Options:

  1. Someone being very bad at pretending to be Russian.

  2. Russians pretending to be very bad at pretending to be Russian because Russians find that hilarious. Fake Russians in movies (Red Heat is a particular favorite) are so funny in a so bad it is good way that the genre and phenomenon, I’m told, has its own name: клюква. (cranberry)

Yes, I speak a tiny bit of Russian. No, I’m not paid to write this.

Anyway, since option 1 demands utter idiocy from supposedly quite clever people, I’m going to go with option 2 because, yes, that sort of joke is absolutely characteristic of the Russian sense of humor.

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My guess is that 2013 exploits have long passed their sell-by date. Anybody with the skill to have acquired these could probably be making more money by other means, if that interested them.

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