Snowden 2.0: NSA Contractor “Secretly Arrested” For Stealing Secrets
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Oct 5, 2016
In the biggest hack of the NSA since the Snowden scandal in 2013, in mid-August we reported that a mysterious group calling itself the “Shadow Brokers” had managed to hack the NSA’s Equation Group – a government cyberattack hacking group associated with the NSA, and released a bunch of the organization’s hacking tools. The “group” also notably said that if t received 1,000,000 Bitcoins, worth roughly $560 million at the time, it would release all the hacked files. With the breach taking place shortly after the infamous hack of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0, speculation promptly swirled that this was another covert Russian operation, with even Edward Snowden chiming in.
However, it now appears this jump to conclusions may have been premature.
As the NYT reported moments ago, the FBI “secretly arrested” an NSA contractor in recent weeks and was investigating whether he is the party responsible for stealing and disclosing highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.
This latest theft of secret data by an insider raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years a disgruntled employee has managed to steal highly damaging secret information from the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward Snowden, who was also a contractor for the agency, took a vast trove of documents that were later passed to journalists, exposing vast NSA surveillance programs in the United States and abroad.
The information believed stolen by this contractor, who like Snowden worked for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton which is responsible for building and operating many of the agency’s most sensitive cyberoperations, appears to be different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft the NYT adds.
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