Was the NSA Hacked? Leak from 'Shadow Brokers' suggests so

[xeni]

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/16/was-the-nsa-hacked-leak-from.html
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[Boundegar]

I’m not the only one to notice the broken English, but the idea that it was a Russian trying to sound like a fake Russian is just too much tradecraft for my little brain. I say it was Trump, he has all the best hackers. Very smart people. Good at English.

[renke]

is there a typical Russian variant of English (Ruslish? Engsian?) or is every incorrect use based on Slavic grammar and pronunciation filed under the broad category Commie KGB spy?

[euansmith]

I’m thinking it was the National Reconnaissance Office all along.

[fnordius]

What also is suspicious is that the Russians have been redoubling their efforts to support Trump, so this does fit in well with that narrative. Note that it’s not evidence, but should it turn out to be the Russians (see their efforts on RT and Sputnik), it would explain the motive – to damage Obama and by proxy Clinton.

[fuzzyfungus]

So, NSA, now would probably be a good time to tell the various vendors about those cool zero days you’ve been keeping for your own amusement, given the odds that somebody else will be using them for their amusement in the relatively near future…

[LapsedPacifist]

I think there’s a decent chance that it is a Russian hacker mocking western preconceptions (Russians call it клюква) on what Russians talk like/do/look like &c.

That said, it could be a frame-up. It does sound like a Hollywood Russian, which may be enough to convince enough people.

I rank the option that it is written in earnest by a Russian relatively low. Russians do screw up English, of course: look for missing articles (Slavic languages don’t have 'em) and for the strange lack of verbs (You don’t use ‘to be’ a lot in Russian. It’s dropped whenever possible.) However, technically minded Russians are very likely to be fluent in English.

(I already left a similar comment to an earlier post. Apologies for repetition)

[LapsedPacifist]

To my ear, fake-sounding. It could equally well be faked by the Russians themselves, of course.

[bobechs]

Anyone who has watched The Princess Bride knows how this debate is going to end.

Badly.

[LapsedPacifist]

So clearly I cannot choose the hacker in front of me. But then the Russians would know that, so I clearly cannot choose the hacker in front of them. But the Russians…

[wrecksdart]

The readme file in the Github repo of the Equation Group was certainly an interesting, if brief, read.

[enso]