Equation Group - Cyber Weapons Auction

[Georgi Guninski]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 03:53:04AM -0600, Deorge Chesterton wrote:
> Alright, who's the lurker from VICE
> 
> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/someone-rickrolled-the-bitcoin-auction-for-nsa-exploits
> 
> 

How did they found this?

Looks like their story is quite after the announcement in THIS thread?

Plagiarism? ;)

The story is at 05:20 AM EST 18 August 2016.

> 
> On 8/18/2016 01:53, Georgi Guninski wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 04:52:09PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> >> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 09:17:09AM +0300, Georgi Guninski wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:11:11AM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> >>>> http://pastebin.com/NDTU5kJQ
> >>> The auction live on air:
> >>> https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr6VitWK
> >> :D
> >>
> >> Either way, fun to watch :)
> > Much better than the Olympics ;)
> >
> > The bitcoin addresses look somewhat weird to me.
> > IIRC they are formed from some crypto stuff of the user and the user
> > has _some_ control of it at least via bruteforce.
> > I suspect the user can't chose the address directly.
> >
> > Here are the addresses in the last transactions, spaces added by me:
> >
> > 1 never 9kNNkr27UseZSHnaEHg1z8v3Mbb
> > 1 gonna V3MFNjymS4RGvUbHACstiS8aSYz
> > 1 give GEk184Gwep2KT4UBPTcE9oqWzCVR
> > 1 you KBMLEohsexdZtkvnTzHnc4iU7Ffty
> > 1 up AbpBEWQ467QNT7i4vBMVPzSfQ3sqoQ
> > 1 never 9kNNkr27UseZSHnaEHg1z8v3Mbb
> > 1 gonna V3MFNjymS4RGvUbHACstiS8aSYz
> > 1 1et AyypstpXLQpTgoYmYzT8M2foBSBe1
> > 1 you KBMLEohsexdZtkvnTzHnc4iU7Ffty
> > 1 down AsBbRQcBfUj8rgQomqhRsNFf1jMo
> > ...skip some...
> > 1 nice C9Xz1rBLvwcphRUVU4GEfaVzvTwa
> >
> > Reading downwards, this makes sense in English in _consecutive
> > transactions_ (except the last).
> >
> > If the addresses were random, the probability of this happening
> > appears very low IMHO, what does math say?
> >
> > Is this known bitcoin joke/weak steganography?