The ShadowBrokers have struck again and the latest release by the secret entity is its most significant release to date.
Back in August of 2016, then-unreleased documents by whistleblower Edward Snowden illustrated that a secretive group known as the ShadowBrokers were in possession of cyber weapons crafted by the NSA.
Fast-forward to the current day and you have an even more significant dump of information and once again it implicates the NSA.
Friday’s release—which came as much of the computing world was planning a long weekend to observe the Easter holiday—contains close to 300 megabytes of materials the leakers said were stolen from the NSA. The contents (a convenient overview is here) included compiled binaries for exploits that targeted vulnerabilities in a long line of Windows operating systems, including Windows 8 and Windows 2012. It also included a framework dubbed Fuzzbunch, a tool that resembles the Metasploit hacking framework that loads the binaries into targeted networks. Independent security experts who reviewed the contents said it was without question the most damaging Shadow Brokers release to date.
The Friday dump contains code that can be used to hack into banks, infect a computer remotely, and ultimately is a threat to anyone who doesn’t promptly update their software following an inevitable patch by Microsoft.
Wow: Microsoft just told me NO ONE from NSA (or anywhere in the government) has contacted them yet re: ShadowBrokers https://t.co/fBfGiDiPAu
— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) April 14, 2017
#Shadowbrokers release after Pompeo statement shows NSA hacking the SWIFT banking network and siphoning off its data https://t.co/Y8VXF0vAc2
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 14, 2017