It's most probable that Russia (or perhaps other adversarial state actors) would have given all the most sensationalist, newsworthy, and reputation-damaging material to Wikileaks, but kept the really juicy zero day exploits to itself.
If this is true, I expect the CIA and/or other agencies will have gone into defense mode and tipped off the relevant vendors, giving details of vulnerabilities they either know to be leaked or have observed to be used in active attacks.
In doing that, I can't really see the CIA revealing any more than is strictly necessary, and to a very limited set of people. Certainly not dumping a whole load of compromising material to Wikileaks.
If "_key2" is an public key embedded within Windows, then presumably there exists one or more holders of the private key somewhere - what exactly are they able to do with this key?
I've seen a lot of concern about "_key2" and "_NSAKEY" being expressed over the years, but scant technical detail.
That Quora post is pretty bad. Actual evidence is requested, but the top answer is a list of wild conjecture.
The responder prefaces most of their comment with "it is widely believed that" and "it is likely that", states without any explanation that the Malicious Software Removal Tool is somehow a backdoor, and that "everyone who knows about [the backdoors] is under NDA", with no evidence to support that statement either.
Surprising as the Windows upgrade process may be to some, that's no excuse for not having backups of your data. If the plaintiffs' data was indeed "destroyed", that's on them, not Microsoft.
The problem with privacy extremists is that they are ruining the ideal of justice with their hardline stance on keeping things secret from the authorities. In effect, this stance is just pandering to child abusers, terrorists, etc. while offering very little positive to society in return. Everyone needs some level of personal transparency to the rest of society, for the collective good of society.
Please note that his sister testified against him:
> As part of their investigation, the Delaware County law enforcement officers also interviewed Doe’s sister, who had lived with Doe during 2015. She related that Doe had shown her hundreds of images of child pornography on the encrypted external hard drives. She told the investigators that the external hard drives included “videos of children who were nude and engaged in sex acts with other children.”
There's no racial conspiracy here, the guy is just a disgusting paedophile.
Unless you've been engaging in online noncery and have amassed a gigantic collection of photographs and videos of child abuse like the scumbag described in the article has evidenced, you should be absolutely fine. It's certainly not the judge's behaviour that is sickening here.
If this is true, I expect the CIA and/or other agencies will have gone into defense mode and tipped off the relevant vendors, giving details of vulnerabilities they either know to be leaked or have observed to be used in active attacks.
In doing that, I can't really see the CIA revealing any more than is strictly necessary, and to a very limited set of people. Certainly not dumping a whole load of compromising material to Wikileaks.