Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

theshadowbrokers.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 151 posts

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#91

Post by jandrese »

ars wrote: post #37
dadver wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything about this auction is lined up to incentivize a scam. Yes, however the contents of the free sample seems very real. Without having dug into the binaries it's hard to tell, but it's hard to imagine someone wrote this to scam 1 million BTC out of the net.

> Yes, however the contents of the free sample seems very real. The only people who could verify if it's real are the Equation Group themself. For anyone else it's impossible to verify - it's just some names. So: If it's real the Equation Group will bid - probably a lot. If it's fake no one will bid. So it'll be easy to tell which it is.

Wouldn't the Equation Group just hack their systems and erase the code?

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#92

Post by [deleted] »

Bartweiss wrote: post #75
1propionyl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that's the real plan here. Use the auction to stir up attention and blackmail any state actors implicated by these files into hushing the whole thing. Hence the open ended termination.

Alternatively, use the auction to stir up attention and low bids, even though there's nothing here. Then imply a state actor won (via a large self-bid) or disrupted the auction. Hence the penny-auction structure, where they can walk away and keep preliminary bids.

[deleted]

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#93

Post by ars »

objclxt wrote: post #81
ars wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, however the contents of the free sample seems very real. The only people who could verify if it's real are the Equation Group themself. For anyone else it's impossible to verify - it's just some names. So: If it's real the Equation Group will bid - probably a lot. If it's fake no one will bid. So it'll be easy to tell which it is.

> If it's real the Equation Group will bid - probably a lot. Why? You have no guarantee what you're bidding for will remain private, and you don't want to give it legitimacy by bidding. Who's to say if it's real the Equation Group wouldn't bid, under the assumption that it's already out there and you have absolutely no guarantees that anyone you're dealing with would keep their word.

They would bid to try to track them, not to try to keep it private.

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#95

Post by djsumdog »

tedmiston wrote: post #57
philippnagel wrote: post #5

Wikipedia link for the lazy folks like me that didn't know the Equation Group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group

> The malware used in their operations, dubbed EquationDrug and GrayFish, is found to be capable of reprogramming hard disk drive firmware. Wow. We really are f----d all the way down the stack.

SD Cards have a full 32-bit processor on them. You can find videos on hacking them. In theory, you can re-label a 32GB card as 16GB, create a 16GB journey and write two copies of everything stored to it. Then you just steal the card back and get all the data off it.

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#96

Post by sbuttgereit »

objclxt wrote: post #86
tedmiston wrote: post #60

Does anyone expect GitHub to intervene as the (partial) host here? Does this put them in a legal situation?

> Does this put them in a legal situation? Not really. GitHub aren't liable for the initial upload due to safe harbor laws. If the dump is fake, then there's no problem for GitHub. Life goes on. If the dump is real then potentially the owner could force GitHub to remove it, but in doing so would have proven the legitimacy of those files , which is something you don't usually want to do. GitHub may, of course, choose…

There's a fair amount of legal question with what the repo creators are doing: likely at least fraud and very possibly theft, conspiracy, etc. While GitHub does have safe harbor protections, once they're alerted to their service being used for illegal activity they do have to intervene. They can't knowingly continue to host such material and maintain their safe harbor status.

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#97

Post by chinathrow »

omginternets wrote: post #80
ajdlinux wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, the whole auction is a ruse to confuse people before they drop the whole thing for free.

Who would that benefit and how?

The seller (they get the money) and everyone else (the world can use the dump for free) but the payer (he payed what the rest of the world got for free).

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#98

Post by Leon »

justindocanto wrote: post #84
jfktrey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what they want you to think.

If somebody tells you "you are not getting you're money back", I think that no longer makes it a scam. You know exactly what you are getting into at that point.

It can still be a scam if you don't receive the goods.

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#99

Post by krenoten »

The preview contains old working exploits. They should release some post-snowden compilable source if they want a little more legitimacy. Python files the russian government picked off a compromised server a few years ago are not interesting. Code shared by snowden with someone who had bad opsec is interesting but not as interesting as what they claim this is.

Re: Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction

#100

Post by moyix »

sctb wrote: post #34
moyix wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I bungled the link. The tumblr has all of the information but it's split into separate posts: https://theshadowbrokers.tumblr.com/

Thanks, we updated the submission.

Could you change the link to the tumblr? The github page has been pulled.
Post reply on HN