Was the NSA Hacked?
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 08/19/2016 09:01 AM
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A hacker group that goes by the name of “The Shadow Brokers” are claiming that they have breached an NSA linked group called the Equation Group.
They claim that they have dumped a bunch of its hacking tools and are asking ransom of 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million) in an auction to release more files.
“Attention government sponsors of cyber warfare and those who profit from it!!!!” the hackers wrote in a manifesto posted on Pastebin, on GitHub, and on a dedicated Tumblr. “How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? [...] We find cyber weapons made by creators of stuxnet, duqu, flame.”
Kaspersky labs uncloaked the Equation Group back in 2015 and billed it as the most advanced hacking group Kaspersky researchers had ever seen. According to Kaspersky Lab, the Equation Group targeted the same victims as the group behind Stuxnet.
What the Shadow Brokers claim is that they got installation scripts, configurations for command and control servers, and exploits targeted to specific routers and firewalls.
“If this is a hoax, the perpetrators put a huge amount of effort in,” the security researcher known as The Grugq told Motherboard. “The proof files look pretty legit, and they are exactly the sorts of exploits you would expect a group that targets communications infrastructure to deploy and use.”
So far the bitcoin wallet that receives offers is as yet empty.
Source: Motherboard
They claim that they have dumped a bunch of its hacking tools and are asking ransom of 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million) in an auction to release more files.“Attention government sponsors of cyber warfare and those who profit from it!!!!” the hackers wrote in a manifesto posted on Pastebin, on GitHub, and on a dedicated Tumblr. “How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? [...] We find cyber weapons made by creators of stuxnet, duqu, flame.”
Kaspersky labs uncloaked the Equation Group back in 2015 and billed it as the most advanced hacking group Kaspersky researchers had ever seen. According to Kaspersky Lab, the Equation Group targeted the same victims as the group behind Stuxnet.
What the Shadow Brokers claim is that they got installation scripts, configurations for command and control servers, and exploits targeted to specific routers and firewalls.
“If this is a hoax, the perpetrators put a huge amount of effort in,” the security researcher known as The Grugq told Motherboard. “The proof files look pretty legit, and they are exactly the sorts of exploits you would expect a group that targets communications infrastructure to deploy and use.”
So far the bitcoin wallet that receives offers is as yet empty.
Source: Motherboard
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