back to article Shadow Brokers hike prices for stolen NSA exploits, threaten to out ex-Uncle Sam hacker

The Shadow Brokers is once again trying to sell yet more stolen NSA cyber-weapons, raising the asking price in the process. And the gang has threatened to out one of the US spy agency's ex-operatives that it claims hacked Chinese targets. In the now-traditional broken English statement, the smug miscreants said they had so …

  1. MrBanana

    Just $130,000?

    They are almost certainly bugs in Windows, why wouldn't Microsoft want to buy them up and fix them ASAP. Isn't it a bug bounty worth paying (even secretly) to avoid the negative PR of another global ransomware attack.

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: Just $130,000?

      Slurp would have to admit Bloat has bugs, cannot do that - think of the children /snark

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just $130,000?

        "Slurp would have to admit Bloat has bugs"

        Slurp has already released plenty of Microsoft bugs - and they give Microsoft only 90 days notice under their policies regardless of if its fixed or not which isn't very helpful to the rest of us.

        Therefore I was glad to see Slurp got slapped for a few billion by the EU....

    2. regadpellagru

      Re: Just $130,000?

      "They are almost certainly bugs in Windows, why wouldn't Microsoft want to buy them up and fix them ASAP. Isn't it a bug bounty worth paying (even secretly) to avoid the negative PR of another global ransomware attack."

      Why would MS do that ? They want to sell more security products, so surely welcome any security issues with their bloat-everywhere OS ! The Shadows Brokers are doing marketing for MS, here ...

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Just $130,000?

      "They are almost certainly bugs in Windows, why wouldn't Microsoft want to buy them up and fix them ASAP. "

      More to the point, why wouldn't the NSA release them to Microsoft? It's time for the rest of the world's governments to start giving US ambassadors serious grief each time their infrastructure or businesses are hit. For a start May could make it clear to Trump that his invite is cancelled and a new one will only be made once that's done.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just $130,000?

      "They are almost certainly bugs in Windows"

      Why do you think that? In the previous release there were only a few Windows bugs. The vast majority were tools and bugs for other stuff - Linux, Cisco kit, firewalls, etc, etc.

  2. Scoured Frisbee

    Something doesn't add up

    200ZEC=$65000

    400ZEC=$131000

    Price fluctuations while the article was being written?

    1. JJKing
      Facepalm

      Re: Something doesn't add up

      Price fluctuations while the article was being written?

      Floating point bug in the word processor. Eeek!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Something doesn't add up

        Shadow accounting.

    2. cdrcat

      Re: Something doesn't add up

      Maybe $65536 and $131072?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "No fallout from last month's sale"

    Maybe the buyer was a CIA front? That's one way to keep their exploits from falling into the hands of malware authors. For a while at least, unless you trust Shadowbrokers won't double dip and resell them elsewhere down the road!

    Maybe they suspect the CIA was the buyer, and decided to jack up the prices since they can afford more. If I were them, and thought I was selling to the CIA, I'd just keep doubling the prices every month...

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "No fallout from last month's sale"

      "unless you trust Shadowbrokers won't double dip and resell them elsewhere down the road!"

      I don't see anything in the shadowbrokers "offer" that says the sale is a one time only deal to the first buyer. I'm sure they are planning on as many sales of the same "goods" as they can.

  4. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Go

    "Nobody makes me bleed my own blood except me"

    Did we really need to know he was on his period?

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