NSA Hacked? 'Shadow Brokers' Crew Claims Compromise Of Surveillance Op

Has the NSA just been hacked? Security experts speaking with FORBES think it’s possible, after a group published malware and attack code allegedly belonging to the Equation Group, a crew linked to the US intelligence agency. But while many believe the leak looks legitimate, the hackers could have pulled off a very clever ruse.

In 2015, researchers at Russian security company Kaspersky Lab revealed a highly-advanced arsenal of hacking tools used by the Equation campaign. They were believed to have been the work of the NSA as the code was linked with previous, allegedly US-sponsored hacks, including the infamous Regin and Stuxnet attacks. That link, however, was never definitively proven nor admitted by the signals intelligence body.

Two days ago, on August 13, a group calling themselves The Shadow Brokers released files on Github, claiming they came from the Equation Group. The files included code allegedly designed to exploit firewalls from American manufacturers Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet . One Chinese company, Topsec, was also an Equation target, according to the leaks. None of the manufacturers had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

The hackers released 60 per cent of the files they claimed to have taken from the Equation Group. The Shadow Brokers said they would release the remaining data to the highest bidder in a Bitcoin auction (they’ve received two bids so far). If they received an extraordinary 1,000,000 Bitcoins, worth roughly $560 million, they would release all the files.

“We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons,” the hacker collective wrote (grammar errors theirs). “We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/08/15/nsa-hacked-shadow-brokers-equation-group-leak/

The trust machine

BITCOIN has a bad reputation. The decentralised digital cryptocurrency, powered by a vast computer network, is notorious for the wild fluctuations in its value, the zeal of its supporters and its degenerate uses, such as extortion, buying drugs and hiring hitmen in the online bazaars of the “dark net”.

This is unfair. The value of a bitcoin has been pretty stable, at around $250, for most of this year. Among regulators and financial institutions, scepticism has given way to enthusiasm (the European Union recently recognised it as a currency). But most unfair of all is that bitcoin’s shady image causes people to overlook the extraordinary potential of the “blockchain”, the technology that underpins it. This innovation carries a significance stretching far beyond cryptocurrency. The blockchain lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority. Simply put, it is a machine for creating trust.

The blockchain food chain

To understand the power of blockchain systems, and the things they can do, it is important to distinguish between three things that are commonly muddled up, namely the bitcoin currency, the specific blockchain that underpins it and the idea of blockchains in general. A helpful analogy is with Napster, the pioneering but illegal “peer-to-peer” file-sharing service that went on line in 1999, providing free access to millions of music tracks. Napster itself was swiftly shut down, but it inspired a host of other peer-to-peer services. Many of these were also used for pirating music and films. Yet despite its dubious origins, peer-to-peer technology found legitimate uses, powering internet startups such as Skype (for telephony) and Spotify (for music streaming)—and also, as it happens, bitcoin...

http://www.economist.com/node/21677198/

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