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New Snowden docs vouch for NSA leak’s authenticity

They said they would release this additional information subject to raising one million Bitcoins – digital currency, in this case worth about $575 million – through an online auction.

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Equation Group was praised by the Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab for being one of the most advanced teams in their field. The group was auctioning the tools on the Internet over the weekend.

Snowden – who’s resident in Russian Federation and appears to have put attempts to seek asylum elsewhere on indefinite hold – speculates that the hacking group behind the leak might be serving a “warning that someone can prove United States responsibility for any attacks that originated from this malware server”.

Equation is reported to have links to the NSA.

The Shadow Brokers have posted no end date for the auction, and will only send the alleged stolen files and the corresponding decryption instructions when “we feel it is time to end”.

“No trust, risk. You like reward, you take risk, maybe win, maybe not, no guarantees”.

In a blogpost, Mr Aitel listed the reasons he said made it “almost certain” that the malware leak was related to the hacks perpetrated on the US Democratic party that resulted in the resignation of some of the party’s senior leadership figures. The agency used it to redirect users who think they’re browsing safe websites to NSA-run servers that infect their computers with malware-and then back to their destination before they know what happened.

“High level U.S. political officials seemed quite upset about the DNC hacks, which no doubt resulted in a covert response, which this is then likely a counter-response to”, he said.

He wrote: “Why did they do it?”

In a series of messages posted to Twitter, Snowden suggested the leak was the fruit of a Russian attack on an NSA malware server and could be aimed at heading off USA retaliation over allegations that the Kremlin was trying interfere in America’s electoral process.

The U.S. National Security Agency, which gained global notoriety in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed its data snooping techniques, has itself become the target of an apparent data breach.

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“This may be an effort to influence the calculus of decision-makers wondering how sharply to respond to the DNC hacks”, he added. He postulates a complex motive for the leak involving gaining diplomatic leverage that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern retelling of a John le Carré novel.

Patrick Semansky  AP