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Ars Technica reports that Kaspersky Labs have released further details tying the NSA to a group of expert hackers dubbed "Equation Group".
The Kaspersky researchers once again stopped short of saying the hacking collective they dubbed Equation Group was the handiwork of the NSA, saying only that the operation had to have been sponsored by a nation-state with nearly unlimited resources to dedicate to the project. Still, they heaped new findings on top of a mountain of existing evidence that already strongly implicated the spy agency. The strongest new tie to the NSA was the string "BACKSNARF_AB25" discovered only a few days ago embedded in a newly found sample of the Equation Group espionage platform dubbed "EquationDrug." "BACKSNARF," according to page 19 of this undated NSA presentation [PDF], was the name of a project tied to the NSA's Tailored Access Operations.
Similarities have been noted in the procedures and capabilities of Equation Group and those detailed in Edward Snowden's disclosures concerning the NSA, most notably the the ability to interdict hardware and software during shipping to be replaced with duplicates infected with highly sophisticated malware. The article also points to timestamp analysis that indicates the authors of the captured malware worked regular office hours: 8-5, Monday-Friday in the UTC-3 and UTC-4 time-zones. The Kaspersky report discounted intentional manipulation of these timestamps and suggests that Equation Group are located in the eastern United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TLA on Friday March 13 2015, @12:14AM
question is, is it an exploited vulnerability or is it an intentional backdoor?
Only the hairdresser knows for sure.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @12:15AM
How can one know if the hairdresser actually knows for sure?
(Score: 2) by TLA on Friday March 13 2015, @12:18AM
you don't trust your hairdresser with national secrets yet you'll trust him to be that close to your ear with a pair of sharp scissors?
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 13 2015, @12:18AM
How can the hairdresser know that he knows for sure?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @12:21AM
How can one know that the hairdresser who thinks she's a woman know that she's actually a woman and not just a gender-bent man?
(Score: 2) by TLA on Friday March 13 2015, @12:22AM
ooh, now we're getting meta... too tomatoey for my palate. :)
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @09:11AM
How can you be sure that he is a hairdresser, after all?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @12:20AM
It seems if you put a backdoor into the systems...there is no escaping who put it there.
That is why the governments use vulnerabilities...there is no finding who put it there.