Category Archives: NSA

A federal judge has sided with prosecutors in the case against former Fort Gordon contractor Reality Winner, finding that her defense team should be muzzled from speaking about any information deemed classified by the government, even if it has been widely reported in local, national and international media publications.

Winner has pleaded not guilty to a single count of violating a provision of the espionage act. She is accused of leaking a classified document to online media news publication, The Intercept.

That document was extensively reported on by The Intercept and numerous other news media organizations in stories on Winner, who is accused of leaking a national security document she allegedly obtained through her job with a NSA contractor on Fort Gordon.

The document is an analysis of the extent of Russias efforts to hack into state election boards. Russian meddling is the subject of U.S. Senate and House intelligence committees investigations and a special prosecutor who is looking into possible collusion between Trump supporters and the Russians during last years presidential campaign.

In his order released Thursday, Magistrate Judge Brian K. Epps wrote that determining what is classified information is a function of the executive branch of government, not the judicial branch.

Just because the defense team has expressed concern of accidentally mishandling classified information is no reason to relax the strict procedures required, Epps wrote. The defense is not prohibited in using classified information in Winners defense, but it must follow the strict procedures, he wrote.

Both sides have until Aug. 16 to weigh in on Epps proposed protective order that describes the closely guarded handling of materials in the case. A classified information security officer is in charge of ensuring such information is handled only by those on the defense team who have obtained security clearance, and only in a secured location.

The defense is to have free access to that location during regular business hours, although other times may be allotted with proper notice and consultation with the U.S. Marshals Service, according to the order.

Any notes or other papers the defense may create using classified information is not allowed outside of the security location. Any document filed with the court that contains or might contain classified information must be filed under seal. Only those portions deemed not classified by the classified information security officer will be unsealed for public review.

At the end of the case any such defense-prepared material will be destroyed by the classified information security officer. The confines of the protective order are a lifetime commitment and any violation is punishable not only by a finding of contempt but criminal prosecution.

The publication of any classified information does not change the classified status unless a member of the executive branch of government with the proper authorization declares the information to be declassified.

Winners trial is tentatively set to begin in October.

Reach Sandy Hodson at sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com or (706) 823-3226

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Judge sides with prosecution in NSA leak case - The Augusta Chronicle

McMaster. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

H.R. McMaster, national security adviser and so-called adult in the room, is apparently gaining some ground over the nationalistic forces inside the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, the White House confirmed that the NSCs senior director of intelligence, 30-year-old Ezra Cohen-Watnick has left the NSC. McMaster had allegedly tried to get rid of Cohen-Watnick who was brought on by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and also worked on the Trump transition soon after taking the NSC job. McMaster reportedly expressed doubts about Cohen-Watnicks qualifications, but advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon intervened on his behalf, and got Trump to step in and overrule McMaster.

Cohen-Watnicks ouster appears to be the latest sign that McMaster isnt done cleaning house of both Bannon and Flynn loyalists at the NSC. (And maybe its also a sign of a new order under chief-of-state John Kelly.) In addition to Cohen-Watnick, Derek Harvey, another Flynn ally and Iran hawk, was removed from his post as NSC Middle East adviser last week.

These personnel changes come amid an Atlantic report that an NSC staffer was fired last month after a troubling memo he wrote arguing that globalists, Islamists, and the deep state are working to undermine President Trumps agenda, and threatening the country.

The NSC-staffer in question is Rich Higgins, formerly director of strategic planning. Through the campaign, candidate Trump tapped into a deep vein of concern among many citizens that America is at risk and slipping away, he wrote in the memo, a portion of which The Atlantic obtained. Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed.

The conspiracy-laced memo reportedly also insinuates that the Russia probe is made-up to hurt Trump and accuses the left of being aligned with Islamist organizations at the local, national and international levels, and:

recognition should be given to the fact that they seamlessly interoperate through coordinated synchronized interactive narratives These attacks narratives are pervasive, full spectrum and institutionalized at all levels. They operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies

Higgins apparently wrote the memo in May, though warning about the Maoist insurgency being co-opted by Islamists was shockingly outside his job description. Its not clear how the memo came to the attention of NSC higher-ups or why it took so long but sources told the Atlantic that the memo had been circulating around the White House and may have landed on the presidents desk. Finally, on July 21, McMasters deputy NSA Ricky Waddell (who himself replaced Trump appointee K.T. McFarland when McMaster took the job after Flynns firing) relieved Higgins from his duties.

In July, former Breitbart writer Tera Dahl also left the NSC, rounding out a string of dismissals for the Bannonesque populists. However, its unclear if some of ex-NSCers will leave the Trump orbit for good, or be reshuffled to new posts within the administration. Which means McMaster may have an edge now, but the battle against the fever swamp is far from over.

Sounds a lot like hell be Skyping with America.

Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen much faster than you thought they could.

After repeatedly pushing off major undertakings like tax reform and raising the debt ceiling, theyre in for a truly hellish fall.

He suggested replacing the top general, but experts say the issue is he hasnt approved a new strategy.

A few high-profile firings of Flynn and Bannon allies including one who wrote a bizarre memo warning against globalists are out in recent weeks.

Despite Governor Cuomos assurances that wouldnt happen, the Board of Elections complied though it wont turn over Social Security numbers.

The GOPs plans to use the budget process for health-care and tax legislation are already half-ruined. The worst could be yet to come.

The Statue of Liberty doesnt mean what you think it does, Miller says.

Sanders, Biden, or Warren may run in 2020 and clear the field of pretenders. If not, Democrats could have the kind of field the GOP sported in 2016.

Yous guys should give him some credit.

Trump said an executive from the organization called him to say his speech was the greatest. Turns out, no such call was ever placed.

After defeat, wild, pointless anger.

Well have to wait for Scaramuccis inevitable book deal to get the real tea.

If the prospects of vulnerable 2018 GOP candidates get much worse, and the chaos in D.C. doesnt improve, an anti-Trump rebellion is a possibility.

The retired general may have had early success in ousting Scaramucci and instilling some order. But this is Trumps White House were talking about.

In a signing statement, Trump says that provisions limiting his power to alter the sanctions are unconstitutional.

This complex in the Rockaways was rebuilt and is clean, well-maintained, and safe.

Two senators, alongside Trump, will propose halving the rate over the next ten years.

After Kellys first 48 hours on the job, even Trump is on his best behavior for his new chief of staff.

She only reports real (a.k.a. positive) stories about the White House.

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It Looks Like HR McMaster Is Cleaning House at the NSA - New York Magazine

Then-Deputy Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, shown talking to the White House press corps in December 2016, joins a growing list of former Obama officials under subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee. (Cheriss May/Zuma Press/Newscom)

'Unmasking' Scandal: Day by day, the scandal of the Obama administration's abuse of domestic intelligence gathered by the National Security Agency grows. Forget the phony Russia-Trump collusion charges the Obama White House looks increasingly to have committed a crime by using U.S. intelligence for political purposes.

The NSA's insatiable gathering of data and conversations on Americans make it a potentially highly dangerous enemy of Americans' freedoms. Who would want to have a federal government spy shop that knows almost everything you do in public, on the phone, by email, or by computer?

That's why the super-secret NSA, which is much bigger than the better-known CIA, has always operated under strict guidelines for how its intel could be used. In its reports, Americans who are surveilled without a warrant while speaking to a foreign citizen are routinely "masked" that is, their identity is kept secret unless there's an overwhelming national security interest in that person being "unmasked."

Unfortunately, like a child with a dangerous new toy, the Obama administration apparently seems to have believed that the NSA could be used for narrow, political purposes.

As a result, a number of administration officials and Obama supporters, including former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and former CIA chief John Brennan, have been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee to answer some questions.

On Wednesday, the panel announced another subpoena had been issued for a former Obama official, this for former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. Our guess is it won't be the last.

This mega-scandal, by the way, has been building for months, though you would hardly know by the near-silence it's been treated with in the media.

But there are exceptions. Back on May 24, the online journal Circa reported that the scandal was far more serious than it first appeared.

"The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community," wrote Circa investigative reporter Sara A. Carter.

Now, this week, Carter reports that the scandal is much bigger than suspected. A review of government documents found that "government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept meta-data, which include telephone numbers and email addresses," Carter wrote.

She notes that the election-year searches by Obama's political aides and other government officials jumped 27.5% from 2015, tripling the "9,500 such searches" in 2013."In 2016 the administration also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13% over the prior year and a massive spike from the 198 names searched in 2013."

Before the Obama administration, under rules propagated by former President George H.W. Bush, "unmasking" incidental intelligence targets was strictly limited and frowned upon. Even after 9/11, despite increased surveillance of people with potential terrorist ties, the rules stayed in place. The potential for abuse, they knew, was too great.

But that ended in 2011 as Obama, using the pretense of fighting a War on Terror that he never even believed in, loosened the rules. As the Washington Examiner reported earlier this week, in 2013 National Intelligence Director James Clapper formally loosened the rules on "unmasking" the names of congressional staffers, elected officials and others.

That major violations occurred under this program seems clear. Last week, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats noted that "the total requests for Americans' names by Obama political aides numbered in the hundreds during Obama's last year in office and often lacked a specific intelligence community justification," according to The Hill.

In particular, Nunes pointed out that "one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests" in 2016. Speculation is that the official was U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power.

Is this a crime? We do know that the FISA Court, in a closed-door hearing last October, already censured White House officials for their violations of Americans' email privacy, citing an "institutional lack of candor" that had become a "very serious Fourth Amendment issue."

As a reminder, the Fourth Amendment states flatly that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ..." Spying on, and then unmasking, hundreds if not thousands of Americans would seem to us to be a brazen violation of the Constitution.

Remember how the media ridiculed and shamed Donald Trump for tweeting out that he had been "wiretapped" by Obama? It's starting to look like that, or something like it, was very much the case.

If it turns out, as some suspect, that the "unmasking" was used for domestic spying on political foes such as Trump, it would constitute a serious crime and would require a special counsel to investigate it.

The immense size of the spying operation and the clear attempt to use the U.S.' intelligence apparatus for questionable personal purposes seems to be at minimum a violation of the law. If it further turns out that there was a coordinated effort by Obama and his aides to use the information in the 2016 presidential campaign, it will be a crime and scandal larger than even Watergate.

Yes, people will go to prison.

Is that what we have here, the political crime of the still-young 21st century? It would be nice if the mainstream media seemed at all interested in answering that question.

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In Abusing NSA Intelligence, Did Obama White House Commit A Crime? - Investor's Business Daily

Defense

As the status of the dual-hat leadership structure of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command remains under review, the Government Accountability Office teamed up with Pentagon officials to identify the advantages and disadvantages of such a change in a new report.

The benefits of the current arrangement, as identified by officials from the Department of Defense, involve collaboration, faster decision making and resource efficiency.

But the big downside is that wider access to NSA's toolkit of exploits increases the risk that destructive bugs will get loose as has been seen recently.

GAO was directed to conduct the review in the report language of a recent defense bill.

Auditors found that because one officer calls the shots for two organizations, senior leaders from each organization have visibility into the procedures of the other, allowing for natural coordination on capability development, testing and business processes.

"In the absence of the dual-hat, [NSA] and CyberCom would need to formalize these internal processes in order to maintain them," auditors write.

Another advantage is that the single leader for both organizations allows for faster decision-making because it doesn't require building consensus across commands.

Officials from several DOD components, including NSA and CyberCom, told GAO that the structure allows the two organizations to make efficient use of their resources by sharing digital and physical infrastructure and by combining employee training sessions.

DOD officials also detailed the disadvantages of the dual-hat approach.

Officials reported concerns about preferential prioritization of one organization's requests for support over the other's, concerns that may only be exacerbated as CyberCom is set to receive the authorities of a unified combatant command.

And, as previously noted, CyberCom's use of NSA's tools and infrastructure increases the risk those tools being leaked or exposed.

Because of the wide range of responsibilities of the two organizations, and as CyberCom is elevated to become a full combatant command, DOD officials expressed concerns that the duties may be too broad for a single officer to realistically handle.

Although they both operate in cyberspace, the missions of CyberCom and NSA also have an inherent tension. CyberCom focuses primarily on conducting military operations, while NSA's mission is primarily intelligence-based.

DOD officials also told auditors that while the sharing of resources is efficient, the resource allocation between the two entities is sometimes unclear. They stated that DOD does not have an official position on the advantages and disadvantages of the dual-hat structure.

The report also includes actions that could limit potential risks of splitting the leadership.

While there is broad support from current and former officials, including former President Barack Obama, for elevating Cyber Command to the level of an independent combatant command, the idea of splitting the agencies has received some pushback.

Legislatively, 2017 National Defense Authorization Act stated that the dual-hat role, which dates back to CyberCom's creation in 2009, will remain in place until an assessment is conducted about the potential security risks of splitting the current structure.

The 2018 bill submitted by the House Armed Services Committee includes a $647 million boost to support the elevation of U.S. Cyber Command to a full combatant command level, but omits new language about an eventual split of the NSA and CyberCom.

About the Author

Chase Gunter is a staff writer covering civilian agencies, workforce issues, health IT, open data and innovation.

Prior to joining FCW, Gunter reported for the C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., and served as a college sports beat writer for the South Boston (Va.) News and Record. He started at FCW as an editorial fellow before joining the team full-time as a reporter.

Gunter is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where his emphases were English, history and media studies.

Click here for previous articles by Gunter, or connect with him on Twitter: @WChaseGunter

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Should NSA and CyberCom split? A watchdog weighs in -- FCW - FCW.com

Documents reveal that the NSA and New Zealands Government Communications Security Bureau surveilled Dotcom in a joint operation officially until 2012. The NSA then reportedly continued to use New Zealand technology to spy on Dotcom after 2012.

GCSB claimed that it turned off all surveillance systems targeting Dotcom and others butfound out more than a year later that surveillance continued without its knowledge, reportedthe New Zealand Herald. The details in the documents have led Dotcom to state that there is now evidence the United States National Security Agency was carrying out surveillance on him.

Dotcom, who should have been protected from GCSB surveillance as a New Zealand resident, said the GCSB did not know because its equipment was being used by the NSA, which was directly involved, the report claims.

In a series of tweets, Dotcomcalled GCSB consistent liars and claimed they were aware of the continued surveillance of him by the NSA.

The tech entrepreneur also called the incident a sellout of NZ sovereignty, before referencing the Five Eyes surveillance alliance between New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

Im not a terrorist or a national security threat. Im not even a criminal, declared Dotcom on Twitter. Im an innovator, a nerd, I play video games. Fuck you NSA!

Charlie Nash is a reporterforBreitbart Tech. You can follow himon Twitter@MrNashingtonorlike his page at Facebook.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

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Report: NSA Illegally Spied on Kim Dotcom in New Zealand - Breitbart News

Kim Dotcom has been of interest to the US government and law enforcement agencies for some time, and it was ruled that the Mega and Megaupload founder could be extracted to the US. But now it seems that the NSA was spying on the internet entrepreneur after surveillance was supposed to have stopped.

New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) had been working with the NSA on a joint surveillance operation called Operation Debut. While surveillance was supposed to have stopped in January 2012, it has emerged that the NSA continued to use GCSB's technology without its knowledge.

According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, GCSB "lost control of its surveillance technology" and later discovered that it had been used to continue to spy on Dotcom for at least an additional two months. The information has come to light in new documents released by the GCSB to the High Court.

The admission is being used as evidence that the NSA was illegally spying on Dotcom while he was resident in New Zealand, using GCSB equipment. It is not clear how this surveillance operation could have been continued by the NSA without GCSB's knowledge, but Dotcom has issued a warning:

New Zealanders must know how much power a foreign state holds over their private information. The NSA has unrestricted access to GCSB surveillance systems. In fact, most of the technology the GCSB uses was supplied by the NSA. If the GCSB was aiding and abetting the NSA to spy directly on New Zealanders then the seriousness of the situation has changed dramatically and a truly independent inquiry and a new criminal investigation will be unavoidable.

The documents show that GCSB systems were also used to illegally spy on an additional 88 people.

Photo credit: Kim Dotcom

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NSA illegally spied on Kim Dotcom in New Zealand - BetaNews

From left, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, National Security Agency director Adm. Michael Rogers and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, arrive for the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A Senate Democrat on the Intelligence Committee is pressing the nations top spy chief to clarify whether FISA Section 702, an expiring law used by the National Security Agency to conduct broad international surveillance, can be used to domestically target Americans.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats in June ifthe government [can] use FISA Act Section 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic.

Section 702 of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act authorizes NSA to tap the physical infrastructure of internet service providers, like fiber connections, to intercept foreign emails, instant messages, and other communications belonging to foreign nationals as they exit and enter the U.S.

Unlike domestic NSA surveillance programs that largely collect metadata information like when a message was sent and received, but not the message itself Section 702 includes the actual content of intercepts.

Not to my knowledge, Coats responded during a congressional oversight hearing. It would be against the law.

Privacy advocates suspect Section 702 creates a loophole for NSA to incidentally collect data belonging to Americans that couldamount to millions of warrantless intercepts. Wyden, who as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee is privy to classified briefings from Coats and other intelligence agencies, seems to have suspicions of his own.

After the hearing reporters sought clarity from Coats, to which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) responded in a letter.

Section 702(b)(4) plainly states we may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States. The DNI interpreted Senator Wydens question to ask about this provision and answered accordingly, the letter from ODNI reads.

Wyden cryptically responded to the ODNI letter, saying [t]hat was not my question, and asked Coats to provide a public response to my question, as asked during the hearing.

Coats has so far declined to provide that response. In a letter to Coats Monday Wyden again asked the DNI to respond publicly to the original question.

As I noted in my previous letter, following the hearing, your office responded from inquiries to reporters by answering a different question, Wyden wrote.

The episode is eerily reminiscent of a March 2013 exchange between Wyden and then-DNI James Clapper, when the senator famously asked the Obama administrations spy chief whether NSA collects any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.

No sir, Clapper answered. Not wittingly.

Months later Americans found out Clappers answer was untrue when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked the existence of widespread agency surveillance programs intercepting data belonging to millions of Americans. Clapper later claimed he thought Wyden was asking a different question: whether NSA was listening to Americans phone conversations.

I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked when are you going to startstop beating your wife kind of question, which is, meaning not answerable necessarily, by a simple yes or no, Clapper later told NBC. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner, by saying, No.

Going back to my metaphor, what I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers of those books in the metaphorical library, he continued. To me collection of U.S. persons data would mean taking the books off the shelf, opening it up and reading it.

Wyden, who knew Clappers answer was untrue from Senate intelligence briefings, recently said hed spent six months teeing it up to ask that question, and that hes been just as careful with the question he asked Coats, suggesting theres more to the answer than Coats provided in June.

Im not dropping this, Wyden said in July. And to say, Oh, he responded to something different, Ill let you draw your own conclusions on that.

Snowden in a March interview said using Section 702 to surveil Americans comes down to little more than word games.

These intelligence agenciestheyre saying to them, collect doesnt mean that we copied your communications, that we put it in the bucket, that we saved it in case we want to look at it, he told The Intercept. To them, collect means that they take it out of the bucket, and actually look at it and read it.

Section 702 expires at the end of December unless Congress renews the law.

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Senator Asks Spy Chief If Americans Are Targeted Under Expiring NSA Powers - InsideSources

For the past few years, there has been much discussion regarding the separation of these two agencies as CYBERCOM was co-located with NSA at its standing up to help get the organization on its feet. As their capabilities and capacities mature, there has arisen a heated argument between some in the executive branch and in Congress to split the two, something that was always envisioned with no clear timeline indicated.

According to officials, DoD does not have an official position on the advantages and disadvantages of the dual-hat leadership arrangement of NSA/CSS and CYBERCOM, GAOs report said. As of March 2017, DoD officials informed us that DoD had not determined whether it would end the dual-hat leadership arrangement and was reviewing the steps and funding necessary to meet the requirements established in the law.

Advantages include more in-depth coordination and collaboration, faster decision-making and more efficient use of resources.

Disadvantages, meanwhile, citing comments from officials canvased, include:

Congress has stipulated a series of measures the government must meet prior to severing the dual-hat, one of which is the cyber mission force must reach full operational capability, something that is not slated to occur until September 2018.

The GAO report also outlined, based on conversations with DoD officials, efforts to mitigate risks associated with ending the dual-hat. They include:

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What do DoD officials think of splitting NSA/CYBERCOM dual hat? - Federal Times

The National Security Agency used New Zealand government technology to spy on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, The New Zealand Herald reports.

New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) admitted to the country's high court that it ended surveillance on Dotcom in 2012. However, the Herald obtained the court judgment in July showing that the GCSB "has admitted unlawfully intercepting private communications of Kim and Mona Dotcom (the Dotcoms) and Bram van der Kolk during the period from Dec. 16, 2011 to March 22, 2012."

The documents show that the GCSB ended its active involvement on Jan. 20, 2012, the day Dotcom's mansion was raided by the police. However, "limited interception of some communications continued beyond the detasking date without the knowledge of GCSB staff."

A 2013 review of the GCSB found that it had unlawfully spied on 88 people.

According to the Herold, the GCSB documents contain an admission of NSA involvement, but it was not made outright.

Dotcom told the Herald, "New Zealanders must know how much power a foreign state holds over their private information."

He added, "The NSA has unrestricted access to GCSB surveillance systems. In fact, most of the technology the GCSB uses was supplied by the NSA."

Dotcom also said he expects his legal team to take action in response to this revelation.

"If the GCSB was aiding and abetting the NSA to spy directly on New Zealanders, then the seriousness of the situation has changed dramatically and a truly independent inquiry and a new criminal investigation will be unavoidable."

2017 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Report: NSA Illegally Surveilled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand - Newsmax

Investigators believe the ShadowBrokers leaks were from a National Security Agency insider, thewebsite CyberScoop reports.

Since August of last year, the ShadowBrokers have leaked files apparently stolen from the NSA, primarily source code for NSA hacking tools along with some additional files.

One set of files leaked by the group contained tools to hack into the Windows operating system. Those tools were eventually used in the devastating international ransomware attacks known as WannaCry and NotPetya.

WannaCry infected between hundreds of thousands and millions of systems, causing such damage to the United Kingdoms hospitals that some patients were turned away. NotPetya caused significant damage to a major Russian energy firm and the U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Merck.

Citing multiple sources familiar with the investigation, CyberScoop reports that ex-NSA employees have been contacted by investigators concerning how the ShadowBreakers obtained their cache of files.

The report claims that the leadingtheory is that an inside actor was at the helm but that other theories are still in the mix, including a foreign hacker.

Sources also told CyberScoop that the investigation "goes beyond" Harold Martin, the NSA contractor arrested for hoarding classified documents at his home last year.

The ShadowBrokers claim to have leaked files to raise interest for a planned sale of the remaining cache of documents. Currently, the group is offering a subscription, leak-of-the-month service.

The rest is here:
ShadowBrokers leak probe looking at NSA insiders: report - The Hill