Yeah, The NSA Was Probably Hacked

The tools materialized as part of an internet electronic auction set up by a group calling itself “Shadow Brokers”, which has promised to leak more data to whoever puts in a winning bid.

Hackers going by the name Shadow Brokers said on Monday that they will auction stolen surveillance tools they say were used by a cyber group linked to the US National Security Agency. In a freaky post written in broken English, the hackers said they had released 60 percent of the material they had and would release the additional 40 percent if they were paid 1 million bitcoin (currently worth more than $500 million).

The files featured installation scripts, configurations for command-and-control servers, and exploits allegedly designed for targeting routers and firewalls from several companies like Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, and Fortinet.

In a rambling manifesto, the hackers said their motives for exposing the NSA-linked team known as “Equation Group” were to “make sure Wealthy Elite recognizes the danger cyber weapons”. As Kaspersky Lab noted, the victims of the Equation Group match those of Stuxnet, a group that is allegedly a joint operation between the U.S. and Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program. “But not all, we are auction the best files”, Shadow Brokers said in a statement accompanying the files.

If the leak is a genuine sample of NSA code – which, so far, researchers say is the case – then this month’s season of information warfare has taken yet another freakish turn.

Snowden himself has said he believes in the veracity of The Shadow Brokers. Knowing this, NSA’s hackers (TAO) are told not to leave their hack tools (“binaries”) on the server after an op.

At the receiving end of the hack is the alleged National Security Agency (NSA) hacking arm, “The Equation Group”.

Equation Group was described as “the most advanced” threat cyberspace has ever seen when it was first discovered in 2015. The attackers claim that they will provide the password to the second file to the victor of a Bitcoin auction.

So the US might be forced to buffer its response to the alleged Russian hack of the DNC or else Russia will expose attacks that the NSA made against other countries. Auction files better than free files we already give you.

“It is extraordinary that a government based (or at least government supported) group would get comprehensively hacked, but there is evidence indicating that this may have actually happened”, cybersecurity expert Steven Murdoch of University College London told the BBC.

It also claims the Equation Group does not know what has been stolen. When you’re trying to break safeguards all day, you have a good knowledge of how to protect yourself. You bid against Equation Group, win and find out or bid pump price up, piss them off, everyone wins.

The Shadow Brokers claimed in their posting that the group “followed” Equation Group traffic, found its “source range” and then hacked it, finding “many many Equation Group cyber weapons”. You worry more, protect self from other bidders, trolls, and haters.

As experts picked through the tools Tuesday, Snowden took to Twitter to say that the leak was “likely a warning” from Moscow to the United States.

As security firm Kaspersky reported a year ago, Equation Group is a mysterious and sophisticated malware distributor that is perhaps associated with the US National Security Agency (NSA). While cybersecurity experts and the Democrats have accused Russian Federation of hacking into the Democratic National Committee, a hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 has surfaced to claim responsibility for the recent hacks that shook the USA political elite. But the facts are still far from clear, and some believe Shadow Brokers’ claims may be politically motivated – and are pointing at Russian Federation as a potential culprit.