Edward SnowdenVerifierat konto

3) This is how we steal their rivals' hacking tools and reverse-engineer them to create "fingerprints" to help us detect them in the future.

4) Here's where it gets interesting: the NSA is not made of magic. Our rivals do the same thing to us -- and occasionally succeed.

5) Knowing this, NSA's hackers (TAO) are told not to leave their hack tools ("binaries") on the server after an op. But people get lazy.

6) What's new? NSA malware staging servers getting hacked by a rival is not new. A rival publicly demonstrating they have done so is.

7) Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack.

8) Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility. Here's why that is significant:

9) This leak is likely a warning that someone can prove US responsibility for any attacks that originated from this malware server.

10) That could have significant foreign policy consequences. Particularly if any of those operations targeted US allies.