Posted: 4/14/2017 8:17:18 PM EDT
[#20]
Everyone still LOLing? As big as y2k?
Arstechnica
NSA-leaking Shadow Brokers just dumped its most damaging release yet
Windows zero-days, SWIFT bank hacks, slick exploit loader among the contents.
The Shadow Brokers—the mysterious person or group that over the past eight months has leaked a gigabyte worth of the National Security Agency's weaponized software exploits—just published its most significant release yet. Friday's dump contains potent exploits and hacking tools that target most versions of Microsoft Windows and evidence of sophisticated hacks on the SWIFT banking system of several banks across the world.
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.
"It is by far the most powerful cache of exploits ever released," Matthew Hickey, a security expert and co-founder of Hacker House, told Ars. "It is very significant as it effectively puts cyber weapons in the hands of anyone who downloads it. A number of these attacks appear to be 0-day exploits which have no patch and work completely from a remote network perspective." View Quote Techcrunch
The Shadow Brokers are back with exploits for Windows and global banking systems
It’s been several months since their last major exploit, but the hacking group dubbed Shadow Brokers is back. The group, which last year dumped malware it had allegedly stolen from The Equation Group, a hacking team associated with the NSA, posted new files over the weekend and followed up today with a dump of Windows exploits.
The latest files contain tools apparently designed to access Windows machines, as well as slideshows documenting the targeting of banking systems.
“Is being too bad nobody deciding to be paying theshadowbrokers for just to shutup and going away. TheShadowBrokers rather being getting drunk with McAfee on desert island with hot babes,” the group wrote in a post announcing the file release.
Security researchers analyzing the files say that The Equation Group targeted VPNs and firewalls to gain access to banking systems. The newly published exploits appear to primarily target older versions of Windows, but some appear to be as current as Windows 8. View Quote Wired
Major Leak Suggests NSA Was Deep in Middle East Banking System
FOR EIGHT MONTHS, the hacker group known as Shadow Brokers has trickled out an intermittent drip of highly classified NSA data. Now, just when it seemed like that trove of secrets might be exhausted, the group has spilled a new batch. The latest dump appears to show that the NSA has penetrated deep into the finance infrastructure of the Middle East—a revelation that could create new scandals for the world’s most well-resourced spy agency.
Friday morning, the Shadow Brokers published documents that—if legitimate—show just how thoroughly US intelligence has compromised elements of the global banking system. The new leak includes evidence that the NSA hacked into EastNets, a Dubai-based firm that oversees payments in the global SWIFT transaction system for dozens of client banks and other firms, particularly in the Middle East. The leak includes detailed lists of hacked or potentially targeted computers, including those belonging to firms in Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Syria, Yemen, and the Palestinian territories. Also included in the data dump, as in previous Shadow Brokers releases, are a load of fresh hacking tools, this time targeting a slew of Windows versions. View Quote
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