On April 8, as part of a long, awkwardly worded rant about President Donald Trump’s betrayal of his “base,” the individual or individuals known as the Shadow Brokers posted the password to an encrypted archive containing what appear to be components of a toolkit associated with the National Security Agency’s alleged Equation Group hacking campaign. But those hoping for even more spectacular exploits than those leaked earlier by the Shadow Brokers will likely be disappointed. However, the files do include a number of tools that may still be usable, as well as significant amounts of information about systems that appear to have been hacked by the NSA.
Many information security analysts were unimpressed.
The Shadow Brokers are the No Man’s Sky of the hacker world.
— Jonathan Nichols (@wvualphasoldier) April 9, 2017
In many respects, the files leaked earlier by the Shadow Brokers—in particular the Cisco router and firewall exploits—were potentially far more damaging, as in many cases they worked against currently deployed Internet infrastructure. The tools in the master file, however, appear to be much older and targeted operating systems that are generally no longer in service—though some of the systems that they were apparently used to compromise are still online.