According to Ryan Kalember, the senior vice president for cybersecurity at Proofpoint, the attack employed the same hacking tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and leaked to the public by the hacker group Shadow Brokers in April to exploit vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system.
“I don't think in the end it had the effect that [the hackers] had hoped it might,” Rogers said during a panel at the Halifax International Security Forum.
A federal contractor suspected of leaking powerful National Security Agency hacking tools has been arrested and charged with stealing classified information from the U.S. government, according to court records and a law enforcement official familiar with the case. Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, was charged with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, authorities said. He was arrested in August after investigators searched his home in Glen Burnie, Md., and found documents and digital information stored on various devices that contained highly classified information, authorities said.Martin is a "decorated former Naval officer and reservist with a broad interest in cyber issues".
Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time. It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.
Should we build tools to search public records?...
Kristol: Liberal Democrats Had Rand Paul’s Policies Before He Did A This Week panel noted that Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) #standswithRand (sigh) over the NSA’s bulk collection of communications data and criminal justice reform, causing Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol to call for a point of clarification. “That’s not fair to Keith,” Kristol said. “Rand stands with Keith. Seriously. They had these positions first. Rand Paul has decided that he wants to be a liberal Democrat, undercut necessary intelligence collection and weaken law enforcement services, and Rand Paul thinks that’s going to sell in the Republican primary.Here's the video:
“More and more service providers are issuing transparency reports,” said Kurt Opsahl, an attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation, whose clients are seeking an end to the letters. “Many would like to say what national security” demands they’re getting. The gag provision violates free-speech rights, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ruled in March 2013 in a lawsuit brought by a phone-service provider that received such a letter. She put her ruling on hold while the government appeals it. Because recipients of the letters are forbidden from discussing them openly, the identity of the phone company isn’t public.The Justice Department's argument centers on the idea that national security concerns trump the general First Amendment rights of tech companies; they say that if companies are allowed to disclose which agency is looking at what data, terrorists will be able to gain inside information into national security investigations, and thus, that the government has a compelling interest in keeping this information classified. Tech companies' main concerns center on the indefinite nature of the gag order, which is also leaving judges questioning the heart of the Justice Department's argument:
Ron Coleman