Snowden And NSA Exploits Being Auctioned Off By Hackers?

A week ago, Edward Snowden fired off some cryptic tweets:

Edward Snowden’s unexplained tweet of a 64-character hex code on Friday led many to question whether the message was a “dead man’s switch,”…

Concerns for the whistleblower subsided late Saturday when journalist Glenn Greenwald responded to a query via Twitter about Snowden’s safety, saying that, “he’s fine…”

Still, mystery shrouds Snowden, whose account has been inactive for over 160 hours, an unprecedented time period for the outspoken civil liberties champion, after his mystery tweet, which was preceded by the similarly cryptic message, “it’s time,” only days earlier…

User Bobanaut, on the bitcoin subreddit, tested Snowden’s message as a private key hash on the bitcoin blockchain, which traced to transactions between two addresses on Sunday. The first transaction logged was in the amount of 0.000911 BTC, suggesting that Snowden was using the cryptocurrency to convey a cryptic 911 distress signal, after the emergency telephone number used in the United States.

Now suddenly NSA Exploits have possibly shown up on the auction block:

Has the NSA just been hacked? Security experts speaking with FORBES think it’s possible, after a group published malware and attack code allegedly belonging to the Equation Group, a crew linked to the US intelligence agency. But while many believe the leak looks legitimate, the hackers could have pulled off a very clever ruse…

Two days ago, on August 13, a group calling themselves The Shadow Brokers released files on Github, claiming they came from the Equation Group. The files included code allegedly designed to exploit firewalls from American manufacturers Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet . One Chinese company, Topsec, was also an Equation target, according to the leaks. None of the manufacturers had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

The hackers released 60 per cent of the files they claimed to have taken from the Equation Group. The Shadow Brokers said they would release the remaining data to the highest bidder in a Bitcoin auction (they’ve received two bids so far). If they received an extraordinary 1,000,000 Bitcoins, worth roughly $560 million, they would release all the files.

His girlfriend reportedly said he was dead, but Greenwald seems to say no.

Some are wondering if the two stories are related. Snowden may be cashing out a little retirement plan he set up to get some road money to disappear. Or he may have saved his own documents to release/not-release right as the US is about to elect the next President. Depending on what they are and what he decides, it could spur quite a debate, and maybe change the course of the nation.