Shadow Brokers resurface, offer to sell fresh 'wine of month' club exploits The infamous Shadow Brokers hacking crew, central players in the release of the vulnerability that led to last week's WannaCrypt chaos, have returned online with a threat to release more exploits. WannaCrypt used the EternalBlue exploit and DoublePulsar backdoor developed by the NSA. These tools were dumped by the Shadow …
Has anyone tried analysing their statements to see what their native language might be, based on the 'mangled grammar' of the English?
I realise that this can be faked of course (and probably is), but is it consistently incorrect and does it consistently match any other natural language grammar patterns?
Is it worth bothering to check?
The punctuation is perfect
Russian, Moscow, whatever School No 80(*) is called nowdays (the one in the small square between the late Stalin period blocks behind the Cosmonaut's arse). You can discern that a graduate is not a native speaker only based on sentence composition and the fact that there are NO PUNCTUATION ERRORS.
(*)That is where most of the translators working for their ministry of foreign affairs as well as a lot of their diplomats' kids used to go. It is selective, English is taught starting at 7 hours per week from year two, from year 4 all subjects except Russian literature are in English.
Its probably not worth it. Poor grammar, weird inflections and odd use of words is all part of the social engineering.
Ever tried reading spam and thought "jeez these guys are retards, what kind of dumbass falls for this?", well its all part of the plan...the poor language is a filter of sorts to weed out those likely to spot the scam.
Those people that can't see the mistakes are the vulnerable people the spam campaign is targeting.
Id imagine its likely this sort of technique is being used here...not to weed people out but to throw off the scent a bit.
The cheaper and crappier a video / statement put out by hackers is the more sophisticated a hacking crew is likely to be in my opinion.
Of course I could be wrong, these guys may well have a poor grasp of English. In a world full of spellcheckers and grammar nazi apps it's unlikely though.
Reading all the depressing news of failure and financial decline at companies like IBM and HP, perhaps we should celebrate Shadowbrokers as a successful growth business? The demands for loads of money against a threat of denying access appears common to both outsourcing and malware sectors.
In fact, maybe IBM shareholders should ask Watson to tell them who is the management team for Shadowbrokers, and then offer them the top management positions at IBM?
"TheShadowBrokers is not being interested in stealing grandmothers' retirement money."
What happens when someone uses the exploits to create ransomware or steal data on grandmothers and steal all their retirement money anyway?
Not really thought it through have they.
Why don't those clowns at the NSA release the exploits to the companies to fix? Silly question I know but it would solve the problem.
"Why don't those clowns at the NSA release the exploits to the companies to fix?"
Maybe that's what TheShadowBrokers are hoping for? They only claim to have 75% of the NSA's exploits. Obviously the NSA want to hang on to the remaining 25%, but they probably don't know which exploits they are.
But perhaps TheShadowBrokers don't even have 75%. Perhaps they have just enough to keep up the illusion and are trying to bluff the NSA into revealing all their exploits. In which case, go Liara!
Maybe that's what TheShadowBrokers are hoping for? They only claim to have 75% of the NSA's exploits. Obviously the NSA want to hang on to the remaining 25%, but they probably don't know which exploits they are.
To know you have 75% of the NSA exploits you'd have to know the total number of NSA exploits.
So I imagine the 75% is just marketing hype.
"The NSA's EquationGroup has spies inside Microsoft and other U.S. technology companies, the Shadow Brokers allege."
If not actual NSA, FBI or CIA "employee spies", then covert agents and subverted employees, as well as people legitimately tasked by the government of their private industry managers to aid the NSA.
The are probably inside a lot of technology companies from around the world, including those companies based in loyal NATO allies, unaligned countries and 'opposition' countries.
I don't doubt the UK, Russia, China and Israel attempt to the same.
It is countries spying on their own peaceful citizens and future politicians I object to.
Companies in high tech, governments, and government leaders should expect to be spied on by enemies, and by semi-friends. Such entities have the resources to defend themselves.
TheShadowBrokers is not being interested in stealing grandmothers' retirement money.
TheShadowBrokers isn't stealing grandmother's retirement money. No, TheShadowBrokers is handing out crowbars so that other criminals can steal grandmother's retirement money.
TheShadowBrokers is not alone in doing this sort of thing under the guise of "boosting the security of the internet".
The difference is that TheShadowBrokers didn't independently discover the exploits it reveals publicly on the open internet for criminals to use.
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