If at the beginning the pecuniary motive seemed plausible, in view of the price asked for the sale of the material in their possession in their attempt 1 (Auction), I abandoned this option. Indeed, they set prohibitive entry prices, which then pushed me to consider activism, especially reinforced by the involvement of public opinion, communication and attention to what was published about them.
After, I think about the political sight, they supported Trump, suggested him a set of measures and were very disappointed by him. Trump was called directly by The Shadow Brokers two times. We can add the fact they’ve no respect for Bill Clinton (See “Message#4; TheShadowBrokers is leaking Bill Clinton Lorreta Lynch Airplane Conversation”).
The last option that seems most likely in view of the elements at my disposal: the attack sponsored by a state or directly executed by a state actor. If there are differences between these two sub-options, the goal is the same, the will to harm from a state towards the USA.
To support my point, I then considered the means, the discretion, the fallout and the money.
We do not know exactly how they came into ownership of these materials. But chances are it must have been sophisticated because since the time U.S. agency teams have been trying to find it. It can be a human leak (plausible++) either under duress or ideology, or an acquisition by negligence (insecure server exposed on internet, plausible++).
One thing’s for sure, disclosure of secrets there was. TSB’s discretion may also be called into question by the use of Twitter, this social network was criticized by Snowden as being monitored by one U.S. secret surveillance program dubbed PRISM, and their use of low privacy currencies with the mistakes they made.
Finally, let’s consider the money fallout. Despite the importance and the criticality of the disclosed information, the financial benefit seems meagre, and TSB doesn’t hasten to recover it. But this must be qualified by their incessant calls to make money like the launch of the Dump of the month or the attempt to retail the information one by one.