The NSA Was Hacked For Real — Confirmed By Snowden Documents

Short Bytes: The Snowden documents have confirmed that the recent NSA hack was real. The Intercept has found the references of leaked malware and exploits in the documents provided by Snowden. The report mentions the existence of SECONDDATE, a hacking program that has affected millions of computers worldwide.

Last weekend, a hacking group named The Shadow Brokers claimed to hack the Equation Group, a hacking group that’s widely assumed to be the NSA.

The Shadow Brokers dumped some private hacking tools and exploits, demanding 1 million bitcoin to release all the files. While the security experts and analysts were looking for some solid NSA connection, The Intercept has confirmed the same.

The Intercept found the references to the leaked exploits in its collection of documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

“The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, “ace02468bdf13579.” That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE.”

After this leak, many security experts have expressed their worry over a two-fold risk. First, the hackers who stole these tools might have used them. Secondly, the ordinary criminals will now use them against various targets.

The hacking tools leaked and put up for action by ShadowBrokers are a wide range of programs that can be used to get inside the computer systems all around the globe in a secret manner.

On the other hand, Snowden suspects that some rival of the NSA is responsible for these leaks. He also says that NSA malware staging servers getting hacked isn’t new, but a public demonstration of the same is.

4) Here's where it gets interesting: the NSA is not made of magic. Our rivals do the same thing to us — and occasionally succeed.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 16, 2016

Coming back to The Intercept report, it mentions that a tool named SECONDDATE was a part of a complex global system that targetted millions of computers worldwide. The leaked Snowden documents show that SECONDDATE was used to spy on Pakistan and Lebanon.