Wikileaks is at it again
 

There are state players who use Wikileaks as a tactical weapon. Begs the question what the strategic variety will look like.

More white noise. Not a new jammer but effective when applied to information resources. I smell the Russians.

https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

Russia, China, North Korea, Iran will most definitely benefit from this information. However, I offer the possibility the leaker was working for domestic players set on providing another embarrassment for the new executive branch. I have not read the full 8,000+ pages but it appears to me it highlights the capabilities; capabilities I am happy to have my clandestine agencies posses and use against our advisories. Should it be found out that these technologies were used for internal use without proper authorization or due process, well then; I will take umbrage. I may even draft a harshly worded letter to my congressman.

When this was released Assange stated that the trove was been sent around to various hackers before it was released, what if you load up the code to invade a system and it's a double reverse hack?

FWIW (and IIRC), it was widely circulated not long after the initial Snowden revelations that he was not an isolated case and there would be other revelations not linked to him. It would seem that an Angleton-like top-down review of vetting, across agencies, would not have been unreasonable at the time - but clearly wasn't done (or was, and the results were too embarassing). I'm shocked.
:munchin

If true, this is pretty scary. The programs that are written by the so-called "black hat" hackers/extortionists/spammers can be bad enough. Lord knows what a government-sponsored/funded team could create, and what it could do in the wild if released.

Stuxnet comes to mind, although that was a bug with a much more specific target.

Too late; Snowden had recalled a time when (while OCONUS) they'd probed another country's core routers & ended up causing a massive net outage to an "ally" that was treated as a hostile act & almost opened hostilities by them in the wrong direction. It can happen.

8000+ pages "leaked". That pretty well rules out 99.99% of the interested population being able to personally review this and form their own opinion on this information, and therefore having to rely on other people's/organizations' analysis, or more likely, other people's/organizations' conclusions without any real analysis.

Maybe the docs come from U.S. sources. Maybe they're made in Russia (or China) to look like U.S. sources. Maybe they're a carefully mixed blend of legit stolen docs and forged disinformation intended to result simply in greater disinformation. Anything coming from Wikileaks, going in any direction, strikes me as an agitated and confusing fur ball of cloaks and daggers taking place in a wilderness of mirrors (borrowing a lot from others' analogies here).

Personally, I'm treating all of it as uninteresting noise about things I generally assume to be true and unconcerning anyway, as I have neither the time nor the capabilities to truly assess it, and all of it is likely rife with disinformation. I take it for granted that all spy agencies across the world with the capability to electronically hack, eavesdrop, surveil or whatever do so...period. Perhaps my attitude if part of the long game of this - creating an environment where surveillance is normalized and accepted by the public.

That said, global competition at the international level is the more pressing issue for me. Breaking/circumventing various laws is merely and question of legal strategy, risk management and mitigation.

That said, I also suspect that Wikileaks is simply a Sub-directorate of the SVR....:rolleyes:

A mess of half baked code that doesn't do what it's supposed to

Exactly.

Truly talented hackers don't work for the Government. The pay isn't high enough and the oversight limits the toys on the playground they are allowed to use.

I have perused most and they are very damning. So either it's a masterpiece maskirovka or there's a widespread witch hunt not seen since Ames. Since there are also plenty tradecraft on covers, I wonder if the release has cost US and asset lives so far.