August 17, 2016
You might have heard about the recent ongoing drama of NSA hack that has sparked a larger debate on the Internet concerning abilities of US intelligence agencies as well as their own security.
Saturday morning the news broke that a mysterious group of hackers calling themselves “The Shadow Brokers” claimed it hacked an NSA-linked group and released some NSA hacking tools with a promise to sell more private “cyber weapons” to the highest bidder.
The group dumped a bunch of private hacking tools from “Equation Group” – an elite cyber attack unit linked to the NSA – on GitHub and Tumblr.
The Shadow Brokers hacking group has published the leaked data in two parts; one includes many hacking tools designed to inject malware into various servers and another encrypted file containing the “best files” that they made available for sale for 1 Million Bitcoins.
However, GitHub deleted the files from its page, not due to any government pressure, but because the hackers were demanding cash to release more data and the company’s policy don’t allow the auction or sale of stolen property on its source code management platform.
NSA Hack Raises a Few Important Question? The leak of advanced hacking tools allegedly stolen from the Equation Group has raised few questions in everyone’s mind:
Is Equation Group an elite cyber attack unit linked to the NSA?
Are the Equation Group Hack and leaked exploits legitimate?
If Legit, Do the advanced hacking tools actually belong to Equation Group?
Who is behind the hack? Russia?
Here’s all you need to know about the NSA Hack:
Kaspersky Confirmed: Leaked Hacking Tools Belong to NSA-tied Group
According to a technical report published Tuesday by security firm Kaspersky Lab, the leaked advanced hacking tools contains digital signatures that are identical to those in hacking software and malware previously used by the Equation Group.
“While we cannot surmise the attacker’s identity or motivation nor where or how this pilfered trove came to be, we can state that several hundred tools from the leak share a strong connection with our previous findings from the Equation group,” Kaspersky researchers said in a blog post.