The whistleblower Edward Snowden believes Russia is behind a leak of malware allegedly belonging to the US National Security Agency (NSA).  Hackers calling themselves Shadow Brokers started an auction for the malware last week.  The malware is used by the NSA to attack or counter-attack in cyberspace.

Source: BBC Technology

Date: August 17th, 2016

Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37104745

Discussion

1) The article notes that “Mr Snowden said the “hack of an NSA malware staging server is not unprecedented, but the publication of the take is”.  The idea here is that governments routinely try to steal other governments hacking tools so they can better understand how a hack is done and almost more importantly who is doing the hacking.  Why is it so important for a government to know who is doing the hacking?

2) The article notes that “Accordingly, this may be an effort to influence the calculus of decision-makers wondering how sharply to respond to the DNC hacks.”  The DNC mentioned here is the U.S. Democrat National Committee, which is charge of the U.S. Democrat political party.  The DNC was hacked, allegedly by Russia, several weeks ago and emails were leaked to the press resulting in the head of the DNC having to resign.  Edward Snowden is suggesting here that his latest hack of the NSA malware is an attempt to limit any response by the U.S. government to this DNC hack.  As much as this whole thing sounds like the plot of the latest N.Y. Times best selling spy novel, how much should a person responsible for IT and security at a company consider it?