The NSA has some pretty advanced, super secret, hacking tools. What if these secret hacking tools were to end up in the wrong person’s hands? Well, that happened.
Guest
Thanks to Jake Williams from Rendition Security for telling us the story.
Sponsors
This episode was sponsored by Thinkst Canary. Their canaries attract malicious actors in your network and then send you an alert if someone tries to access them. Great early warning system for knowing when someone is snooping around where they shouldn’t be. Check them out at https://canary.tools.
Support for this episode comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up.
Blinkist book recommendations:
- The Robots Are Coming! by Andres Oppenheimer
- Zucked by Roger McNamee
- Who Can You Trust? by Rachel Botsman
- The Future of the Professions by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
- Targeted by Mark Smith
- Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott
- WTF? by Tim O’Reilly
- The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols
- Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
Sources
- https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/were-these-computers-hacked-by-nsa-a-9494
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/nsa-leaking-shadow-brokers-lob-molotov-cocktail-before-exiting-world-stage/
- https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/04/10/shadow-brokers-return-with-a-password-and-message-for-trump/
- https://malwarejake.blogspot.com/2017/01/shadow-brokers-russian-thoughts.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/nsa-shadow-brokers.html
- Video: Jake giving a talk about living in the shadow of the shadow brokers
- Video: Joe Biden talking about Russia
- Bruce Schneier’s response to shadow brokers
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Artwork this episode by Ross Branchette.
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Additional music by Epidemic Sound.
Equipment
Recording equipment used this episode was the Shure SM7B, a cloudlifter, Audient ID4, Sony MDR7506 headphones, and Hindenburg audio editor.
Transcript
[FULL TRANSCRIPT]
JACK: Sometimes you read the news and the story sticks with you forever. One such news story I saw was some security news I heard and I’ll always remember it. It was when I first saw a presentation about the NSA ANT catalogue. Have you seen this? It’s mind-bending. [MUSIC] Okay, here’s what happened. Someone with access to NSA documents took the ANT catalogue and gave it to journalists at Der Spiegel and then they published it. At first, we thought it was Snowden who leaked these documents but we’re not sure if it was him or a second leaker. I asked Snowden on Twitter if it was him, but he didn’t respond. So, what’s NSA’s ANT catalogue? ANT stands for Advanced Network Technology and in this catalogue are a list of hacks, exploits, and cyber-surveillance devices that the NSA can use for certain missions. If you work at the NSA and you need an exploit, you look through this catalogue and then request to get one of these devices or pieces of software.