Wikileaks releases CIA's Marble: Malware obfuscation tools • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by mhermher » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 4:15 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #160

freeflight wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>like secret police stuff, control over national media, poisoning of political enemies, assassinations How about "secret police stuff" like the illegal abductions of people to put them into torture "black sites" all over the world? [0] Massive control over global media trough lobbying and propaganda instruments? [1] A long history of successful, and not so successful assassination attempts aimed at the "ideological o…

Compared to: 0. People straight up disappeared in Syria, people arrested and locked up for political reasons in Russia - DOMESTIC stuff. 1. (Leaving aside that sock-puppet commenters are not the same as "massive control over global media".) The use on a massive scale of paid trolls by Russia, and the outright censorship of mass media outlets in countries from Russia and China to US allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia…

Compared to having higher rate of incarceration, not only in per-capita terms, but also in absolute terms. Even with China's extra billion people and their repressive laws. The US is way ahead and it isn't even close.

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

#212

Post by travmatt » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 4:20 AM UTC

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #127

bsamuels wrote: post #114

this comment is a great example of foreign astroturfing try posting from an account with a comment history next time

I'm Nigerian and I feel the hypocrisy of the US government is a great danger to the world. Russia and China are known "evils" and that we can deal with. The US keeps us a d American citizens blind. I hope my comment history works for you and you will not be reporting me to any "authorities"

It's hilarious that you can non ironically can say America keeps its citizens blind and use China as a comparison. Then Russia as an example of the lesser danger as it is in the middle of several wars, and literally trying to export a governing style based on a close relationship between its intelligence services and crime syndicates.

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

#213

Post by travmatt » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 4:23 AM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #154

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.

So what's the solution? Stop publishing until they've caught up on Russian and Chinese leaks? Why just Russia and China? Should each country get a leak until we get back to the start of the cycle again? Why should Wikileaks care who's interests any leaks serve? They should leak interesting material they are given - that's their purpose.

If Wikileaks didn't actively censor and threaten leakers of Russia related information you'd probably have some validity to your argument.

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

#214

Post by kungtotte » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 4:30 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #147

goldmouth wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read Ghost Wars by Steve Coll or read up on the various Latin American dictators the CIA supported. The US may not be the 'worst' but we certainly have our hands bloodier than most nations.

Look up, whilst you're comparing badnesses: 1. The Catholic Church, particularly the 30 Years War and Huguenots (themselves not entirely blameless). 2. The Spartans and Helots. 3. England / Britain: North America, India, China, and Australia. 4. Belgium and the Congo. 5. Japan, and ... pretty much everyone in their neighborhood: Korea, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, etc., etc. 6. The Mongols. 7. Nazi Germany. 8.…

The real issue with the US (and also the Catholic Church) is how underhanded and manipulative they are. They don't launch armies and run around conquering things, but they throw their money and power around to make others do their dirty work for them which means that there won't be any kind of effort to stop them.

When Nazi Germany tried to take over the world, the world banded together to stop them.

If the US funds a revolution in some developing country or other; that country doesn't have the means to rise up against the US and do anything about it, and the UN or the EU or what have you sure as hell won't declare war on the US because of some regional instability in the Middle East or Africa.

That's why the US are dangerous, not because they commit atrocities on the scale of Nazi Germany (which they don't, not even close).

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

#215

Post by sanswork » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 4:48 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #208

reddytowns wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By complaining about WaPo, et al, you are guilty of "whataboutism" yourself. Is the standard so low that we can't even mention that a non profit(?) organization devoted to releasing leaks of wrongdoing shouldn't be blatantly partisan? Edit: I misread the last part of your comment about "whataboutism". Yet my question still applies, isn't it?

The claims of partisanship rely on claims that Wikileaks somehow selects their sources. They are not a hacking organization and they do not go choosing targets to hack for the leaks, so they cannot be selective in the same way that, for example, the NYT chooses openly to be. I have yet to see anyone even claim that Wikileaks participates in the hacks themselves, let alone to provide evidence thereof.

The claims of partisanship rely on Wikileaks own claims to have information that they aren't releasing.

Assange has said they have information on Trump that they weren't releasing.

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

#216

Post by canada_dry » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:01 AM UTC

openasocket wrote: post #185

asimpletune wrote: post #161

How about instead of talking about whether Wikileaks is good or bad or whether you support them or not, let's talk about the content of the post. From what I've read so far, this is pretty freaking cool. It's super interesting to read these docs and see their thought process involved, especially since the product their building is so different from what people are making on a day to day business. It actually looks pr…

Self-modifying the underlying machine code isn't what it used to be. Besides the difficulty in writing it, there's lot's of caveats about how it interacts with the cache and the instruction pipeline. It also requires setup, because with modern memory protection all the machine code is read-only. Changing the memory protection for some machine code to be executable and writable at once will set off some alarms (And is…

> Dynamic Analysis. Run the executable and watch the contents of memory as the program unpacks itself

Of course nowadays the makers of fine malware detect whether they are running inside a sandbox, and won't activate.

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

#217

Post by nebabyte » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:11 AM UTC

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.

Anonymously fulfilling a role doesn't morally obligate them to then do something else in the name of "fairness".

What, do you want people to receive spy training and move to russia?

In that case - why not do it yourself? If there's a moral obligation there, isn't it yours as much as theirs (if not more, as you're the one who feels it is 'unfair' otherwise)?

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

#218

Post by throwaway2048 » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #213

k-mcgrady wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the solution? Stop publishing until they've caught up on Russian and Chinese leaks? Why just Russia and China? Should each country get a leak until we get back to the start of the cycle again? Why should Wikileaks care who's interests any leaks serve? They should leak interesting material they are given - that's their purpose.

If Wikileaks didn't actively censor and threaten leakers of Russia related information you'd probably have some validity to your argument.

any links to evidence of this?

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

#219

Post by nebabyte » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #85

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...

The truth may not be political, however the curation is. Take the US election, for example. Wikileaks has released information about Clinton and the DNC, and claims they have stuff they never released about Trump and the GOP [1, 2]. Other sources have said the GOP was hacked in the same attack that got Podesta [3]. The only person less likely to criticize Russia than Trump is Assange. Wikileaks lost any proximity to…

Wikileaks is not even the most egregious or organized abuse of the american political system. If you have objections about this last election, Wikileaks is the last place to be demanding answers from.

If anything, Wikileaks were one of the only ones doing anything to stop Trump that people should've gotten on board with. HRC was far from the only option and by far not the best one (and this isn't 'hindsight' - many were arguing it well before the primaries), yet she was the DNC's golden girl so any potential for internal reconsideration was squashed, and the base left disillusioned.

Even if you weren't on board with Bernie (and I don't see how, for the same reasons HRC publicists would say the same for hrc, 'because she has the same policies' - except with Bernie having a track record of following through on his convictions), you should have seen the need for an actually-democratic internal process within the party, rather than strongarmed support among the elite and nomination-by-fiat rather instead of even considering who'd make a stronger candidate.

Unless HRC hasn't learned her lesson for 2020, I'm sure you'll see other names come up then - but those people were here now, and you and the base could've heard their names a lot more than you did (which was probably not at all). Instead, the DNC bet it all on their hugely-flawed 'golden girl' and lost.

But no - clearly _Wikileaks_ fucked up. They should've just ignored the flaws like good little citizens and let her run unquestioned like you did. (Not trying to sound so facetious, but if that's really your argument...)

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

#220

Post by yeukhon » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:15 AM UTC

DBNO wrote: post #203

openasocket wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is for obfuscating string constants, the foreign languages included is a red herring. The reason for this is that nontrivial code often has string constants in it, and the string contents are stored in the ELF/PE file in a manner that makes it trivial to extract. Since these strings often reveal a lot about the malware (e.g. a string constant "Your computer has been infected with randomware. Please deposit %d bi…

Thanks for this insight! I'll edit my comment to credit you, but I won't delete it since someone might have the same thought process as me. My comment: So I see now (thanks to you) that it is just showing test cases (test warbles) to demonstrate that these scrambling techniques work with foreign languages. However, why would the us gov need to make sure that this program can successfully obfuscate Unicode strings in…

Just FYI. Those Chinese characters are really really really rarely used in any writings. In fact, anyone with Chinese reading compression will tell you those are gibberish words and none of the words make any sense.