CIA malware and hacking tools • Hacker News Board

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#551

Post by criley2 » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

wamsachel wrote: post #519

abandonliberty wrote: post #485

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

But part of these leaks implicate the Russians, as their toy chest has been exposed too.

Russians do not have free press and the state controlled media allows them to use nationalism to strongly insulate themselves from criticism and foreign press.

Combined with their propensity for assassinating dissenters and journalists, there is less willpower to resist the fascism.

It's to the point now that things like this improve Putin's poll numbers, not hurt them.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#552

Post by devoply » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #356

pjc50 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the weapon too secret to use sounds very Dr Strangelove, there have been slightly similar things with real weapons. The one I remember is when radar-triggered proximity shells were invented at the end of WW2 they were only issued for use on ships, so that undetonated shells would fall into the sea, so couldn't be recovered and investigated by the enemy.

Which makes perfect sense. Any weapon leaves some trace (even if only new theory as to what is possible), so its use against a party that does not have that technology but is capable of understanding the technology at some level will always give information to the enemy. Using a modern missile against an indigenous people will only impart that you are capable of that type of attach. Using a modern missile against WWI…

You don't just have to worry about the people you are attacking. Their allies can also reverse-engineer the tech. Pakistan and China come to mind. Pakistan has given China a lot of tech that it's recovered.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#553

Post by rodionos » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

  > Self-delete is used to insure that any Hive implant that lays dormant ... for a predetermined amount of time
  > effectively destroys itself with the only remnant being a “configuration file” 
  > (.config) and a log file (.log) left behind in /var directory.

.log & .config in /var

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#554

Post by samstave » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

abandonliberty wrote: post #485

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

>* Someone is seeking to control the narrative.*

Uh... welcome to /r/conspiracy....

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#555

Post by wavefunction » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

badloginagain wrote: post #545

abandonliberty wrote: post #485

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

It absolutely provides the Trump Administration with cassus belli to take punitive measures against the CIA. WikiLeaks appeared to have received the dump quite recently. This is all conjecture, but this could be seen as a 'civil cyber war'. The Executive branch suffers from leaks, followed by an evisceration of the CIA hacking capabilities? Trumps love of the intelligence community is well known, and the scale of the…

Are you positing that Trump or members of his administration have somehow released these CIA resources? Or just that WikiLeaks is bringing attention to these resources and their current "libre" status in the wild?

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#556

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

digler999 wrote: post #276

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the above is certainly plausible(killing someone with a car), I highly doubt this is the case here: https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-michael-hastings-crash-car...

While I don't think the CIA is above killing a US citizen on US soil (you know, for "security" or something), I don't think they need to hack a vehicle to do it, nor would they want to draw the unnecessary speculation and attention. I would expect antics like that to be reserved for high-ranking foreign officials or other hard-to-reach people. If there's one thing that agency should be expected to excel in, it's untr…

> I don't think they need to hack a vehicle to do it,

The CIA has multiple ways to cause a death. No doubt about that. They don't "need" to use any particular method, but if they want to kill someone, that have to choose at least one method.

>nor would they want to draw the unnecessary speculation and attention.

What unnecessary speculation and attention? Is LAPD going to bust out their JTAG debuggers, and compare the collection of firmwares in Hastings' car to a clean sample? Practically nobody believes that the CIA/US gov't killed Hastings by hacking his car. Given the propensity for most Americans to never even consider a thing once its been labeled as a conspiracy theory, I'd say that gives about as good a cover as the CIA (or whomever) would ever need. We already have people hypothesizing this as the manner of Hastings' death; but do we see any apparent effort to dispute/disprove it? No, simply chuckle and call it a conspiracy theory. It will go away on its own without regard to whether it was in fact a conspiracy.

>I would expect antics like that to be reserved for high-ranking foreign officials or other hard-to-reach people.

The spies have to perfect their craft somehow. Where is it written that a method of assassination must vary by the apparent importance of the proposed victim?

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#557

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #50

tehwalrus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If these actions are being done domestically against US citizens, with no just cause sure I will get upset, but that has yet to be seen. May I just ask, why does this distinction matter? Why do you believe the world should be divided into "people who were issued bits of paper by my overlords" and "people who weren't"? I never understood this division in other people's heads. It leads to all sorts of philosophical p…

I believe that in my heart as well. However, we don't currently live in a world with a federated global government. The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens. How would you spark a revolution in people's thinking?

Do keep in mind that Trump received 63M votes out of a total population of 319M (~20%). Even if you consider the election a referendum on globalization (and there are many reasons besides nationalism that people may have voted for Trump, as well as reasons that an anti-globalist might have voted for Clinton), that's pretty far from a majority.

Similarly, Brexit received 17.4M votes out of a total UK population of 64M (~26%).

There are certainly a non-negligible number of people who believe in borders and nations and patriotism, and they can't and shouldn't be overlooked. But "majority" is stretching it.

As for how to spark a revolution in people's thinking: you make your case to the young & open-minded, explaining why it's a good idea, and then you wait for the old and stubborn to die off. Some people will never change their mind, and you can't force them to. Everyone dies eventually, though, and if something is actually a good idea then future generations will have a chance to remake the world in their image.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#558

Post by wavefunction » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #538

abandonliberty wrote: post #485

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

> This may not have been an act of altruism like Snowden I'm still really surprised no one questions the Snowden narrative. A man who earned $200k a year, worked remotely in Hawaii with his smoking hot wife, suddenly decided he has a conscience, either collected data slowly over time or did a massive data dump and released all this information to Greenwald and Der Sepgiel. Then he flees to Russia where he openly twee…

Snowden was living in Hawaii with his girlfriend, not his wife.

Facts are important if you want to promote your theories/wild fantasies.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#559

Post by yellow_viper » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #538

abandonliberty wrote: post #485

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

> This may not have been an act of altruism like Snowden I'm still really surprised no one questions the Snowden narrative. A man who earned $200k a year, worked remotely in Hawaii with his smoking hot wife, suddenly decided he has a conscience, either collected data slowly over time or did a massive data dump and released all this information to Greenwald and Der Sepgiel. Then he flees to Russia where he openly twee…

I agree that they could've done it, and they've done stuff like this in the past. The pros outweigh the cons. The reasons you've listed don't seem 'worth it' to me.

Maybe there's some alternative motive we're missing - but I doubt it was to prove they couldn't be stopped even after exposal.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#560

Post by moduspwnens14 » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #549

moduspwnens14 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The document covers how they put a good amount of effort into ensuring there's not a clear link back to the CIA or relevant parties if one of these things is discovered. I imagine having hardware level vulnerabilities would much more quickly point directly to the only agencies capable of such techniques.

That's sort of my point though. If hardware back doors exist (and I don't argue that they can't!) they're exotic, highly protected and rarely used. They aren't routine instruments of state surveillance.

Yes--sorry. My comment was in support of your point.