Collaborate Disseminate
Nghia Hoang Pho may not have had malicious intent, but removal of the materials forced the NSA to abandon years of signals collection work. Continue reading NSA staffer takes top-secret hacking tools home ‘to study’, gets 66 months
The US government has been indicting foreign government hackers, and American government hackers are worried China and Russia might start doing the same to them. Continue reading Ex-NSA Hackers Worry China And Russia Will Try to Arrest Them
In August 2016, a mysterious entity calling itself “The Shadow Brokers” began releasing the first of several troves of classified documents and hacking tools purportedly stolen from “The Equation Group,” a highly advanced threat actor that is suspected of having ties to the U.S. National Security Agency. According to media reports, at least some of the information was stolen from the computer of an unidentified software developer and NSA contractor who was arrested in 2015 after taking the hacking tools home. In this post, we’ll examine clues left behind in the leaked Equation Group documents that may point to the identity of the mysterious software developer. Continue reading Who Was the NSA Contractor Arrested for Leaking the ‘Shadow Brokers’ Hacking Tools?
The Trump administration will continue its predecessor’s push for the adoption of global cyber norms, but is putting efforts to do so through the United Nations on the back burner, preferring instead to work with small groups of allied countries, White House cybersecurity czar Rob Joyce said Tuesday. This new “coalition of the willing” strategy seems at odds with the plans apparently developed last week for a joint cybersecurity framework with Russia to combat outside interference and hacking of elections. “We’re going to be working with like-minded countries to start to enforce the norms that we’ve talked about” — like the one outlawing attacks on critical infrastructure in peacetime — Joyce told a standing-room only crowd at the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s cybersecurity R&D showcase. “We’ve got to raise the cost on the attackers … [We’ve got] to start pushing at those norms we know need to be enforced and following up so […]
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The leaked NSA documents and tools published in recent months by the mysterious Shadow Brokers group have provided rare insight into the clandestine digital espionage operations pursued by the spy agency over the past few years, including information on operations aimed at Iran and Russia. Last Friday the rogue group released a new package of NSA files, this time detailing numerous tools designed to break into older versions of Microsoft Windows and a campaign to compromise banking networks in the Middle East. Additional targets were also mentioned one week prior in a separate archive that was largely ignored by most media outlets. Yet the document cache published April 8 provides evidence that the NSA had once launched a series of successful computer-based intrusions against multiple high-profile foreign targets, including the Office of the President of Iran and the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, said two former intelligence officials who spoke to CyberScoop on the condition of […]
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Continue reading Shadow Brokers leaks show U.S. spies successfully hacked Russian, Iranian targets
The man responsible for leading the National Security Agency’s defensive mission says his team is fielding more calls than ever from agencies across the government. Dangerous, highly capable hackers and a desire by agencies to adopt cloud technology have increased the workload for Information Assurance chief Paul Pitelli and his office, which he says is “sort of like the Geek Squad for defense” in government. Pitelli is a career professional who has served in the NSA for more than 20 years as the secretive spy agency transformed into what it is today — a highly sophisticated technology behemoth with an array of federal responsibilities, including both signals intelligence and protecting sensitive government systems. With the recent retirement of former Information Assurance Directorate head Curtis Dukes, a renown computer scientist and intelligence community icon, Pitelli took on an increased role in an ever important effort to ensure that the Defense Department and broader government […]
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Continue reading NSA cyber-defense chief: ‘I have never been more busy’
Prosecutors reportedly plan to charge Harold T. Martin with espionage. Continue reading Former NSA contractor may have stolen 75% of TAO’s elite hacking tools
We traveled to Berlin and London to find out more about the NSA’s best hackers. Continue reading Here’s What We Know About the NSA’s Elite Hacking Squad