Edward Snowden: Russia Is Chief Suspect In 'NSA Hack'

[Becky]

You might have already heard about the 'NSA hack' (National Security Agency, USA) which came to light recently. In fact it was not the NSA which was directly hacked, it was a group that has been associated with them called the Equation Group who are themselves a hacking group.

Shadow Brokers, a separate hacker group, have claimed responsibility for the hack, and they have announced that they will be holding a bitcoin auction where the code will be sold to the highest bidder. Edward Snowden has been sharing his thoughts via Twitter, and Forbes reports:

In a stream of tweets today, Snowden laid out his theory on why the NSA was breached by a hacker crew called The Shadow Brokers. This weekend, that mysterious crew published data they claimed to have stolen from a server belonging to the Equation Group, a spy operation with links to other allegedly American cyber espionage campaigns, including Regin and Stuxnet. The leaks included exploits and malware for a range of widely-used firewalls, from US manufacturers Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet , and Chinese supplier TopSec. The NSA has not yet commented on whether the breach is real, though most experts believe it to be.

Most intriguingly, Snowden thinks Russia is the most likely suspect. He believes, as do others, that the timing of the leak is interesting. As many of the leaked files were dated mid-2013, the hackers have been sitting on the data for at least three years. It’s only now the materials are being released, a matter of months after US intelligence sources and American security companies claimed the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had been hacked by Russia. Snowden believes Russia is sending a warning on the dangers of attributing cyberattacks.

Read more at Forbes. You can also read more about the hack at The Hacker News.