Security firm Kaspersky Lab, in the ongoing story about the NSA, has determined that a threat of previously unknown complexity and sophistication has been embedding surveillance software on hard drives produced by a number of well-known manufacturers.

Kaspersky did not specifically name the NSA, but posits that the spying campaign is somehow related to Stuxnet -- the tool used by the NSA to attack Iran -- and the Flame group.

A former intelligence worker confirmed to Reuters that the NSA has successfully developed techniques for hiding spyware on hard drives. Director of the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky Lab, Costin Raiu said:


"Once the hard drive gets infected with the malicious payload, it is impossible to can its firmware. To put it simply: for most hard drives there are functions to write into the hardware firmware area, but there are no functions to read it back. It means that we are practically blind, and cannot detect hard drives that have been infected by this malware."

With infected machines found in the likes of Russia, Afghanistan, China, Syria and Yemen, it amounts to a massive spying operation.

The coders responsible for the insertion must have had access to the source code of hard drives. Manufacturers normally would guard the access ferociously.