Kasperky Identify The ‘Equation Group’
Kaspersky Lab has uncovered an advanced hacking group, allegedly within the US National Security Agency (NSA), that has been arming the US with offensive cyberwarfare capabilities.
Similar to the original Manhattan Project, which gathered the best scientists around and saw the western superpower develop the world’s first ever atomic bomb at the close of WWII, the US is working behind the scenes to strengthen it’s defences by increasing its attacking capabilities.
Kaspersky last week reported on a whole suite of advanced Trojans linked back to the ‘Equation Group’ – which could be a wing of NSA –far more sophisticated than anyone could have expected.
Tracing its origins back as far as 2001 (and alluding that it could go as far back as 1996), Kaspersky found numerous pieces of malware, some powerful enough to reprogram the hard drive firmware of over a dozen different hard drive brands, including Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Maxtor and IBM.
The Equation Group’s suite of tools can begin to infect machines in very clandestine ways. In the first stage the agency might compromise a web forum or an ad network and use it to serve a simple 'validator' backdoor to potential targets.
From here the Trojan establishes if the machine is of interest or not. Then a more sophisticated piece of malware comes into play, and it’s incredibly advanced.
