Hackers post NSA code in protest against Trump’s attack on Syria

“Be considering this our form of protest,” the group wrote in a politically loaded release published on Medium. The password they released grants access to what Edward Snowden called the NSA’s “Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons”.

The group’s trademark broken English in the statement once again might have been deliberate.

In August last year, The Shadow Brokers released tools from the NSA to scale hardware firewalls and a cache allegedly containing more such hacking tools, promising to hand over the corresponding password to the winner of a bitcoin auction.

Their fund-raising effort was however unsuccessful, and The Shadow Brokers called off their effort in January. But now, Motherboard confirmed that the password did indeed decrypt the original auction file, and anyone can unlock the auction data cache.

The hacking tools are from the NSA’s own special-ops desk, the “Equation Group”. A former NSA source told Motherboard, that “it’s plausible” that the leakers are actually disgruntled insiders.

A researcher known as x0rz, told Motherboard the cache included an exploit for Solaris, a Unix based operating system.

NSA whistleblower William Binney – who exposed the NSA’s pervasive surveillance of Americans long before Snowden, confirmed that he believes the hack is the work of an angry “insider employee”.

A Reuters op-ed by cybersecurity expert and columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, James Bamford, said it seemed the most probable explanation, and that certainly Russia once again had nothing to do with this latest daring hack.

Edward Snowden notes that while the leak is “nowhere near” representing the NSA’s complete tool set, there’s enough that the NSA should “instantly identify” where and how the kit leaked.

The hackers slammed Donald Trump’s betrayal of his core supporter base, with the recent attack on Syria, urging Trump to honour his campaign promises and to ignore globalist and MIC interests.

The Shadow Brokers’ effort has a clear political motive. “Respectfully, what the fuck are you doing?” the group writes. “TheShadowBrokers voted for you. TheShadowBrokers supports you. TheShadowBrokers is losing faith in you. Mr. Trump helping theshadowbrokers, helping you. Is appearing you are abandoning “your base”, “the movement”, and the peoples who getting you elected.”

The post highlights Steve Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council, and the US missile strike against a Syrian military base.

The hackers did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the group had previously signalled to Motherboard, that they were “not being irresponsible criminals”.