The hackers who leaked the NSA’s hacking tools claimed that they were only dumping some of the tools they were able to obtain, and demanded millions of dollars in ransom for the rest. The files apparently came from a server used by the Equation Group, a high-level hacking team that many observers believe to be affiliated with the NSA.
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As The Intercept notes, this is the first time that hacking tools from the extremely guarded and mysterious NSA have been leaked to the public.
Security researchers who have seen the stolen data believe it’s authentic, including Kaspersky researchers and Nicholas Weaver. Snowden speculated on Twitter that the tools could have been found on a server it used to infect a target, but former NSA staffers interviewed by Motherboard said the leak could be the work of a “rogue insider”, claiming that some of the files in the leak would never had made it to an outside server. Several security experts told US media the code appears genuine, and Snowden said “circumstantial evidence” pointed to Russian involvement. Messages sent to an address registered by the Shadow Brokers were not returned.
Former NSA employees have told various media outlets that the code appears to be legitimate as well.
In a series of tweets, Snowden expanded on a theory that Russian Federation was behind the hack and subsequent leak, positioning it as a bold diplomatic gambit designed partly at deflecting sanctions over Russia’s alleged involvement in a recent hack against the US Democratic Party.
As for the contents of the files stolen from the NSA computer, nobody is really looking to buy them, Wired reports. That’s nowhere near the asking price of 1 million bitcoin that the hackers are looking for (that’s $576 million). The highest bidder will get to find out. Everyone else would lose their bids. “This leak is likely a warning that someone can prove U.S. responsibility for any attacks that originated from this malware server. that could have significant foreign policy consequences”.
Suggesting that the leak was likely to be a warning, Mr Snowden added: “That could have significant foreign policy consequences”.
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The U.S. National Security Agency, which gained global notoriety in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed its data snooping techniques, has itself become the target of an apparent data breach. “Particularly if any of those operations targeted elections”.
