[tptacek]

Are these things you think it stands to reason the IC must be doing, or things you know for a fact that they are doing? It stands to reason for a lot of people that the IC must stockpile vulnerabilities, but they don't (they keep just a couple working ones) --- just as an example of counterintuitive things about how CNE works.

[0xbadcafebee]

It's partly fact, partly reasoning. One fact comes from STUXnet and Snowden Leaks, where they developed and deployed vulns that persisted for years without notice. The other fact is I've interviewed at the research centers and my eyes got pretty wide at the stuff they told me without an NDA, so they're definitely paying a lot to develop and acquire more vulns/new attacks. That was all 20 years ago, but the contracts are still there so there's no reason to suppose it stopped. There's also past NSA directors that've spoken at DEFCON for years about how they want more hackers, and the new cold war with China and Russia has been ongoing for nearly as long.

I'm not saying they stockpile vulns; I'm saying if somebody on the dark web said they had a vuln for sale for $50k, and it could help an agency penetrate China/Iran strategically, it would make no sense to turn it down, when they already pay many times more money to try to develop similar vulns.

[tptacek]

You are here implicitly comparing Stuxnet and BULLRUN, two of the most sophisticated and expensive CNE operations ever conducted, with an XSS in Discord.