Whoever is hitting NSA is doing it expertly.

What I managed to extract from the article (do point out any flaws, I am open to them and I am just trying to do some mini-analysis here without taking sides):

- The attackers understand that warning the wide public will net zero results, now and centuries in the future. Homo Sapiens hasn't evolved enough of a collective conscience to actually act on revelations such as Snowden's, that's the historically obvious fact. Even the words of the biggest security experts like Schneier fall on deaf ears either because the politicians are better at rhetoric or because the public is too busy posting their food pictures on Instagram, or (as I believe) a mix of both. So they opted for the nuclear approach: release the hacking tools and demonstrate practically to the world the dangers of these hidden-under-the-table hacking tools. And now many more business people and politicians pay more attention than before. This is a sound psychological attack technique. Demonstrate that your opponent's claims for doing the best for the populace are not holding to reality. Even though I find this immoral and potentially dangerous IMO none of us can deny the devastating results to NSA's reputation.

- Spread FUD and never share anything truly revealing. They use language fuzzing techniques, occasionally engage in political debates without clarify which side they ally with (saying they are on Trump's side means nothing), use both old and new hacking tools and other files, use vague speak to shift suspicion to former NSA employees or contractors (I imagine this is done so they exhaust the agency while it tries to plug yet another leak which might as well be imaginary -- but they can't risk it and the attackers know it) -- all of these tarnish the image of the NSA and forces them to work extra to try and find moles, fix bugs in their own defense systems, go on internal witch hunts, double down on efforts to find the remote hackers, compartmentalize their physical and virtual clearance levels, etc. As mentioned in the parentheses, the attackers seem to aim to exhaust the agency and IMO it's working -- although none of us keyboard warriors in HN can't know for sure of course.

- Have time work for you. The fact that Shadow Brokers are hunted by a lot of law-enforcement agencies for like what, 15 months now? -- is projecting a clear image to the world that these agencies aren't as ubiquitous as they would want us to think. This probably encourages other people to try and hit other (or same) agencies all over the world. Not sure if that is good or bad -- opponents of this approach might say it will lead to anarchy and chaos but in my opinion (partially founded by rudimentary knowledge of chaos theory and game theory) the living systems like ours have plenty of emergency levers to pull them back into a more balanced state. It's 50/50 though, I don't claim anything either way. In any case though, the agencies' inability to catch these people makes the wide public lose confidence in them.

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Please note I am not taking sides here. I do believe NSA does a lot of unethical things and should be held much more accountable than it is right now, but I am uncertain if what Shadow Brokers is doing is the right way to achieve that result. It might as well make NSA and friends become even more paranoid and actually become much better and more subtle in its mass surveillance... which is a loss for everybody but them.

Oh well, time will tell. In any case, this is interesting news and development and I am slightly pleased that the intelligence agencies get some run for their money. And slightly terrified of the possible consequences.