Blame It on Russia

But James Bamford, author of many spy/intelligence articles and books, doesn't believe it.

Today, [Watergate's campaign spying by] amateur burglars [has] been replaced by cyberspies, who penetrated the DNC armed with computers and sophisticated hacking tools.

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Now, in the latest twist, hacking tools themselves, likely stolen from the National Security Agency, are on the digital auction block. Once again, the usual suspects start with Russia – though there seems little evidence backing up the accusation.

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[I]f Russia had stolen the hacking tools, it would be senseless to publicize the theft, let alone put them up for sale. It would be like a safecracker stealing the combination to a bank vault and putting it on Facebook. Once revealed, companies and governments would patch their firewalls, just as the bank would change its combination.

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f Russia had stolen the hacking tools, it would be senseless to publicize the theft, let alone put them up for sale. It would be like a safecracker stealing the combination to a bank vault and putting it on Facebook. Once revealed, companies and governments would patch their firewalls, just as the bank would change its combination.

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According to the former NSA officials who viewed the Shadow Broker files, they contained a number of exploits [...] s that the NSA often pays thousands of dollars for to private hacking groups.

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I was [...] given unrestricted access to [the Snowden] cache of documents. These included both the entire British, or GCHQ, files and the entire NSA files.

But going through this archive using a sophisticated digital search tool, I could not find a single reference to the ANT catalog [a highly secret NSA document that was leaked in Decmeber 2013]. This confirmed for me that it had likely been released by a second leaker. And if that person could have downloaded and removed the catalog of hacking tools, it’s also likely he or she could have also downloaded and removed the digital tools now being leaked.

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Consisting of about 300 megabytes of code, the tools could easily and quickly be transferred to a flash drive. But unlike the catalog, the tools themselves – thousands of ones and zeros – would have been useless if leaked to a publication. This could be one reason why they have not emerged until now.   Reuters

"The second leaker." I've always wondered whatever happened to that person who was referenced at the very end of the Poitras documentary about Edward Snowden (Citizen Four). Since we have never been told, I assumed that it was likely the NSA found that person and neutralized him in one way or another. Maybe not.

We'll be looking forward to the promised further emails from Wikileaks.

But we now have entered a period many have warned about, when NSA’s cyber weapons could be stolen like loose nukes and used against us. It opens the door to criminal hackers, cyber anarchists and hostile foreign governments that can use the tools to gain access to thousands of computers in order to steal data, plant malware and cause chaos.

It’s one more reason why NSA may prove to be one of Washington’s greatest liabilities rather than assets.

The fun has only just started.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.