Is There a Russian Mole Inside the NSA? The CIA? Both?
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by DonViejo (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).
Source: thedailybeast.com
The latest leak by the Shadow Brokers hackers exposed classified information that could only have come from within the NSA, setting the stage for a Cold War ritualthe mole hunt.
A message from Vladimir Putin can take many forms.
It can be as heavy-handed as a pair of Russian bombers buzzing the Alaska coast, or as lethal as the public assassination of a defector on the streets of Kiev. Now Putin may be sending a message to the American government through a more subtle channel: an escalating series of U.S. intelligence leaks that last week exposed a National Security Agency operation in the Middle East and the identity of an agency official who participated.
The leaks by self-described hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers began in the final months of the Obama administration and increased in frequency and impact after the U.S. bombing of a Syrian airfield this montha move that angered Russia. The group has not been tied to the Kremlin with anything close to the forensic certitude of last years election-related hacks, but security experts say the Shadow Brokers attacks fit the pattern established by Russias GRU during its election hacking. In that operation, according to U.S. intelligence findings, Russia created fictitious Internet personas to launder some of their stolen emails, including the fake whistleblowing site called DCLeaks and a notional Romanian hacker named Guccifer 2.0.
I think theres something going on between the U.S. and Russia that were just seeing pieces of, said security technologist Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at IBM Resilient. What happens when the deep states go to war with each other and dont tell the rest of us?
The Shadow Brokers made their deubt in August, appearing out of nowhere to publish a set of secret hacking tools belonging to the Equation Groupthe security industrys name for the NSAs elite Tailored Access Operations program, which penetrates foreign computers to gather intelligence. At that time, the Shadow Brokers claimed to be mercenary hackers trying to sell the NSAs secrets to the highest bidder. But they went on to leak more files for free, seemingly timed with the public thrusts and parries between the Obama administration and the Russian government.
From the start, outside experts had little doubt that Russian intelligence was pulling the strings. Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility, exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted last August. Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the [Democratic National Committee] hack.
Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/20/is-there-a-russian-mole-inside-the-nsa-the-cia-or-both.html
Would love to see this dissected on Maddow.
turbinetree
(24,688 posts)Zoonart
(11,844 posts)I believe his exact words were,"This is a spy hunt."
elmac
(4,642 posts)pnwmom
(108,973 posts)MineralMan
(146,282 posts)ancianita
(36,013 posts)elmac
(4,642 posts)Like banks, Exxon, Koch brothers, ect...
DonViejo
(60,536 posts)Duplicate of https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141756772