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Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

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Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#61

Post by salesguy222 »

eli wrote: post #37
salesguy222 wrote: post #15

I wonder if Sony really was "hacked by the North Koreans" then.

You think the CIA did it instead? Other than it maybe being technically possible, what evidence or motivation would they have for doing that?

Before I answer, I'd like to state that I am an American citizen living abroad and I have no particular allignment to or against any country :)

I don't know if the CIA did or would want to do this specific attack.

But, I could grasp at straws to fit the Sony attack in line with the narrative of what I would call "1950s American Imperialism".

In my view, the Americans took covert or overt actions for many decades now to undermine economically competitive countries. We've bombed Germany, Italy, Japan, Serbia, Korea, China, Vietnam... we've invaded Iraq... we've taken actions against many Latin American governments and Iran...

Over the years, the powers at be have been pretty good at framing other nations for attacks or dangers, in order to drum up public support to attack them. Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs, USS Vincennes...

So, in short, if you had definitive proof that Russian and NK hacking were in fact orchestrated by the CIA...

... then the economic imperialism narrative would hold as pretty plausible motives!

The most blatant endgame here for the US is "NK hacked us. They have nukes! It's time to invade!". And then NK becomes a new market for the West to take over for cheap as they did in Communist Yugoslavia and so on

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#62

Post by shuntress »

rdtsc wrote: post #10
vxxzy wrote: post #6

What would be the advantage to making your exploits appear to come from other countries? What do we gain from this? It feels like an instigation.

There is a huge advantage to do that. False flag attacks are one of the tried and true methods of intelligence agencies since ancient times. For example the official pretext for WWII was started as a false flag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident US did it at the start of Vietnam War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident We gain a lot from this. We can for example manufacture "Russian hy…

>"Look we found a Russian rootkit on a DNC server"

Implying a 'Russian rootkit' was planted in a false flag operation?

So the CIA pretended to be Russia helping to get Trump elected -- why?

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#63

Post by salesguy222 »

mjg59 wrote: post #29
salesguy222 wrote: post #15

I wonder if Sony really was "hacked by the North Koreans" then.

This describes a string obfuscation technology. It doesn't do anything to disguise the origin of malware.

They've also found that kids who kill bugs and squirrels go on to become serial killers at slightly higher rates than "normal people" :)

I doubt the CIA is only involved in one technical attack and not others.

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#64

Post by ceejayoz »

elif wrote: post #41
ceejayoz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One does start to worry about a truth-teller who only ever presents one side of the story, though.

There are 6.5 billion people who can tell the truth on the other side as well. It's not productive to attack the one group doing something, when everyone else is doing nothing.

As much as they'd like to portray things that way, Wikileaks is hardly the only group doing something. The Snowden leaks didn't go through them. The Panama Papers didn't, either.

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#65

Post by elif »

eli wrote: post #43
elif wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth isn't responsible for serving anyone's interests, and especially not the interests of the biggest secret keeper. The truth is not political, except that it is the natural enemy of politics which rely upon secrecy. If your perspective is that more secrets are being kept by more egregious actors than the US, the truth welcomes your contribution...

Wikileaks creates misleading summaries and narratives of the documents they release and then uses various techniques to encourage the media to follow that narrative. For example, they dump an unreadably large cache at the same time as a sexed-up summary and then tell news orgs that if they cover the story quickly and favorably, they'll be rewarded with early access to future leaks. The "CIA uses your smart TV to spy…

I'm not sure i follow your reasoning.

I follow all of their leaks, but i'm not aware of these "summaries" you are referring to. It sounds like perhaps your interaction with wikileaks is mediated by the media, and your problem is with the media.

For instance, this link we are commenting on is directly to a primary document, with no summary provided. The only "summaries" i am aware of, would be their tweets, which are inherently oversimplified.

I recommend the wikileaks subreddit for navigating the "unreadably large cache" if that is an issue you are facing.

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#66

Post by ajross »

elif wrote: post #55
ajross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your perspective is that more secrets are being kept by more egregious actors than the US, the truth welcomes your contribution... If your perspective is that the US is truly the most secretive and "egregious" actor on the modern stage, then you are shockingly naive. Or, more likely, misled by the skewed "truth" you are reading.

please provide something to educate me. Who has more spy bases around the world? Who has disseminated their spy tools so widely that they have become available to 3rd parties? Who else is tapping undersea fiber? Who else is behind the SSL layer at google? I like primary documents obviously, but publications are fine too.

So "egregious" behavior extends only to digital surveillance? OK, fine. Surely the US is the worst at that, I think that's a fair assessment.

I thought you were talking about seemingly-Wikileak relevant things like secret police stuff, control over national media, poisoning of political enemies, assassinations... Y'know. Boring stuff. Not "egregious" I guess.

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#67

Post by DigitalJack »

oliv__ wrote: post #59

The WARBLE languages are pretty telling of which actors this software is intended to target: * Arabic * Chinese * Russian * Korean * Farsi Interesting...

Why is that interesting? Seems obvious so I am wondering if I missed something.

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#68

Post by convivialdingo »

azinman2 wrote: post #21

I've really turned on Wikileaks. Itd be one thing if all the major powers had equivalent leaks publishing, but focusing on the US basically serves Chinese and Russian interests far more than it does the citizens of the US. String obfuscation isn't stemming from some corrupt deal that needs sunlight... this is just doing a disservice to their original mission.

The US is easily the biggest target.

I would think Wiki's justification is that the US has far more culpability in world affairs than most other countries. They get involved in disputes that most other countries can't touch.

In terms of risk, the US has a massive intelligence and political footprint that simply leaks more. The opportunity and impetus to leak are simply greater in all regards.

In comparison, China and Russia run much more despotic regimes. They have fewer qualms routing out political opposition, and simply have less open and democratic societies. There is a vastly smaller opportunity due to size as well.

Re: Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools

#70

Post by sleepybrett »

stevenwoo wrote: post #45
ceejayoz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They pretty much put up anything sent to them that they think is real. Maybe, maybe not. How would we know they do that?

Assange had an AMA on reddit, and he said they received Trump intel pre election and judged it was not worthy of releasing compared to the Clinton data dump.

That's a lot of editorial bias for an organization that's goals, at least initially, revolved around transparency.
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