Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons • Hacker News Board

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#101

Post by throwaway71958 » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

benwilber0 wrote: post #90

throwaway71958 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "Ne…

> the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse that's not exactly hard for anyone that payed even a little attention during the very controversial US political season in 2016. Same with Brexit. The terminologies and crux issues have been widely debated on the social web. I would say it has actually been very difficult to escape

I've observed the whole Brexit thing with great interest, but I don't feel well versed in the vernacular. And for someone well versed, it'd be difficult to know what the person who's not well versed wouldn't know. Which is what we're observing here.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#102

Post by Twisell » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

mavdi wrote: post #85

Given the latest world events, I've personally come to realise that security agencies play an important role in keeping us safe, from external entities or from ourselves. This is disaster in my (current) opinion. We tend to dismiss the work the likes of NSA do, not thinking much about what would happen if they didn't do it. Snowden categorically dismissing anything that NSA does, just means he's a deluded idealist, m…

Or maybe we just need more traditional intelligence because focusing on identified threat based on field intelligence is more effective than spying on every communications and hope to somehow filter relevant data point over noise.

If I two terrorists agree to act when a nyan cat is posted on a specific Facebook account no neural network can help you manage the threat. Human based investigation and infiltration on the other hand can lead to real world judiciary actions.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#103

Post by atemerev » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:46 PM UTC

benwilber0 wrote: post #90

throwaway71958 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "Ne…

> the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse that's not exactly hard for anyone that payed even a little attention during the very controversial US political season in 2016. Same with Brexit. The terminologies and crux issues have been widely debated on the social web. I would say it has actually been very difficult to escape

Right. However, things like "caucus" and "SCOTUS" are really unlikely to be written by a Russian, on any English knowledge level. We do make mistakes, but our mistakes are different. In this text, there are too few common mistakes, and too many strange things.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#104

Post by cyberpunk » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:46 PM UTC

aiham wrote: post #74

Animats wrote: post #41

This stuff looks old. There are versions for Solaris and SCO Unix.

> $ua->agent("Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"); https://github.com/x0rz/EQGRP/blob/master/Linux/bin/xp_phpbb...

There is at least one very large bank (which I won't name) who is unable to move off ie6 for some internal apps which to my knowledge are still using this in some backoffices even today.... At least two years ago they were paying Microsoft less money than a rewrite would cost to support it so it kind of makes sense....

I only found that bad boy out after disabling some ciphers on some loadies which broke a lot of their stuff....

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#105

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

throwaway71958 wrote: post #79

ooqr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that was GP's point. The text is intentionally garbled with no identifiable first-language bias.

Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "Ne…

That's far from true. Professional propagandists from Russia would definitely know about that stuff because they'd follow the campaign. Other trolls outside USA would see headlines that could give them useful information. I have no idea of nationality of the author but nothing in it precludes them from being Russian. Especially at this level in the game where people might put talent or time into faking things to generate a specific reaction.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#106

Post by mavdi » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #95

mavdi wrote: post #85

Given the latest world events, I've personally come to realise that security agencies play an important role in keeping us safe, from external entities or from ourselves. This is disaster in my (current) opinion. We tend to dismiss the work the likes of NSA do, not thinking much about what would happen if they didn't do it. Snowden categorically dismissing anything that NSA does, just means he's a deluded idealist, m…

I agree, to quote Mike from breaking bad. "Just because you shot Jesse James, don’t make you Jesse James.” Snowden is skilled at data theft and not a source of wisdom when it comes to surveillance. The liberal media (hate to use that term) is equally complicit. They have trotted him around as source of wisdom. The leaker of Pentagon Papers had a position that allowed him to asses the subject matter. Snowden on the ot…

Indeed we can either believe the world getting irreversibly worse after these leaks, is just a coinsidence, or somewhat related.

A lot of people died, it would be naive to think snowden's actions didn't contribute to it. However noble his intentions might be.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#107

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

mavdi wrote: post #85

Given the latest world events, I've personally come to realise that security agencies play an important role in keeping us safe, from external entities or from ourselves. This is disaster in my (current) opinion. We tend to dismiss the work the likes of NSA do, not thinking much about what would happen if they didn't do it. Snowden categorically dismissing anything that NSA does, just means he's a deluded idealist, m…

[deleted]

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#108

Post by doktrin » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #94

throwaway71958 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "Ne…

Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.

I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#109

Post by jwilk » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

mootothemax wrote: post #64

doktrin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just seems like general obfuscation to me. It would be very weird for anyone to make assumptions about their identity based on broken english.

While I get your wider point, I find the different types of mistakes that ESL'ers with different mother tongues make absolutely fascinating. I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles, people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons. When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in Engli…

No, in Polish adjectives normally go before nouns, just like in English.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#110

Post by cyphunk » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

A good time to remember the official US Intelligence Community statement and policy/lie on 0days, as given post-heartbleed:

    When Federal agencies discover a new vulnerability in commercial 
    and open source software – a so-called “Zero day” vulnerability
    because the developers of the vulnerable software have had zero days
    to fix it –  it is in the national interest to responsibly
    disclose the vulnerability rather than to hold it for an investigative
    or intelligence purpose.

https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/82416436703/statement-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575802