In slap at Trump, Shadow Brokers release NSA EquationGroup files – Ars Technica

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 willlikely 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 archive, which the Shadow Brokers previously attempted to auction off, contains just over 300MB of files. It does not appear to contain the entire archive of Equation Group tools. Many of the tools apparently date back to the 1990s, targeting platforms like the Digital Equipment Corp., Alpha, Sun Solaris 2, the defunct Chinese Red Flag Linux, and other older Linux distributions. Other tools are apparently focused on telecom targets, including tools for getting into GSM cellular networks and breaking DES encryption.

The dates rangebetween August of 2000 and August of 2010, referencing code names including Incision, Orangutan, Reticulum, Jackladder, and Patchicillin.Based on the files, a majority of the systems targeted appear to be Sun Solaris systems running on SPARC architecture.

The post from Shadow Brokers, entitled "Don't Forget Your Base," is (like previous posts) in strangely wordedEnglish and delivers a white-supremacist, isolationist, anti-"globalist" message, offering "constructive criticism" on Trump's recent policy moves, including the strike on Syria, and offering the password to the encrypted archive previously upfor auction as "our form of protest."

Ars is continuing to examine the contents of the files and will post a more complete report soon.

Go here to see the original:
In slap at Trump, Shadow Brokers release NSA EquationGroup files - Ars Technica