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Moscow-Based Security Firm Reveals What May Be The Biggest NSA "Backdoor Exploit" Ever
Since 2001, a group of hackers - dubbed the "Equation Group" by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab - have infected computers in at least 42 countries (with Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Syria most infected) with what Ars Technica calls "superhuman technical feats" indicating "extraordinary skill and unlimited resources."
The exploits - including the 'prized technique' of the creation of a secret storage vault that survives military-grade disk wiping and reformatting - cover every hard-drive manufacturer and have many similar characteristics to the infamous NSA-led Stuxnet virus.
According to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware that launches every time a computer is turned on.
Disk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up.
"The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over," lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said in an interview.
...
Kaspersky's reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital Corp, Seagate Technology Plc, Toshiba Corp, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
The group used a variety of means to spread other spying programs, such as by compromising jihadist websites, infecting USB sticks and CDs, and developing a self-spreading computer worm called Fanny, Kasperky said.
Fanny was like Stuxnet in that it exploited two of the same undisclosed software flaws, known as "zero days," which strongly suggested collaboration by the authors, Raiu said. He added that it was "quite possible" that the Equation group used Fanny to scout out targets for Stuxnet in Iran and spread the virus.
Which, as Reuters reports, strongly suggests the "extraordinary skills and unlimited resources" were funded by the NSA...
The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.
That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.
Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.
The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States.
A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.
The global coverage is clearly focused in a particular region (and not in the US)...
As Kasperskey exposes, victims generally fall into the following categories:
• Governments and diplomatic institutions
• Telecommunication
• Aerospace
• Energy
• Nuclear research
• Oil and gas
• Military
• Nanotechnology
• Islamic activists and scholars
• Mass media
• Transportation
• Financial institutions
• Companies developing cryptographic technologies
As an interesting note, some of the “patients zero” of Stuxnet seem to have been infected by the EQUATION group. It is quite possible that the EQUATION group malware was used to deliver the STUXNET payload.
So far, Kaspersky have identi?ed several malware platforms used exclusively by the Equation group. They are:
EQUATIONDRUG – A very complex attack platform used by the group on its victims. It supports a module plugin system, which can be dynamically uploaded and unloaded by the attackers.
DOUBLEFANTASY – A validator-style Trojan, designed to con?rm the target is the intended one. If the target is con?rmed, they get upgraded to a more sophisticated platform such as EQUATIONDRUG or GRAYFISH.
EQUESTRE – Same as EQUATIONDRUG.
TRIPLEFANTASY – Full-featured backdoor sometimes used in tandem with GRAYFISH. Looks like an upgrade of DOUBLEFANTASY, and is possibly a more recent validator-style plugin.
GRAYFISH – The most sophisticated attack platform from the EQUATION group. It resides completely in the registry, relying on a bootkit to gain execution at OS startup.
FANNY – A computer worm created in 2008 and used to gather information about targets in the Middle East and Asia. Some victims appear to have been upgraded ?rst to DoubleFantasy, and then to the EQUATIONDRUG system. Fanny used exploits for two zero-day vulnerabilities which were later discovered with Stuxnet.
EQUATIONLASER – An early implant from the EQUATION group, used around 2001-2004. Compatible with Windows 95/98, and created sometime between DOUBLEFANTASY and EQUATIONDRUG.
Although the implementation of their malware systems is incredibly complex, surpassing even Regin in sophistication, there is one aspect of the EQUATION group’s attack technologies that exceeds anything Kaspersky has ever seen before.
This is the ability to infect the hard drive ?rmware.
The plugin version 4 is more complex and can reprogram 12 drive “categories”
* * *
So to summarize:
1) US sanctions Russia
2) a Russian-based research group (Kaspersky Lab is an international group operating in almost 200 countries and territories worldwide. The company is headquartered in Moscow, Russia, with its holding company registered in the United Kingdom. Kaspersky Lab currently employs over 2,850 qualified specialists) reveals that through Equation group's code, there is NSA presence across the supply chain of the highest margin US products .
3) As Reuters notes, the exposure of these new spying tools could lead to greater backlash against Western technology, particularly in countries such as China, which is already drafting regulations that would require most bank technology suppliers to proffer copies of their software code for inspection.
4) And Peter Swire, one of five members of U.S. President Barack Obama's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, said the Kaspersky report showed that it is essential for the country to consider the possible impact on trade and diplomatic relations before deciding to use its knowledge of software flaws for intelligence gathering. "There can be serious negative effects on other U.S. interests," Swire said.
It appears the 'boomerang' is boomerang-ing...
* * *
Full Kaspersky Labs report below:
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Anybody home?
What do you mean Portland and Tucson?
Intel designs most of its important new chips, most recently the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge i3, i5 & i7 series, in Israel...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/israel-inside-a-history-of-intels-r-d-in-is...
Don't tell me you are surprised??
Intel generates chips and code in Israel, Malaysia, Phillipines, amongst others. It creates all sorts of room for trouble.
not just hardware - my current (soon to be former) company is releasing in china but one of their big requirements has been to port the windoze/sql stack to their linux/mysql. a lot of people think it's about cost but I keep telling them I bet it's more about their forks being nsa-scrubbed. now, if they can compromise drive firmware that's a whole nother level of rectal irritation - wonder if they have compromises for netapp, emc, hitachi, etc too?
... and people wonder why noboday wants to buy american products...
It has to be said, USA, the best funded, biggest and baddest terror organization in the world.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”
? George Orwell
Once discovered the people who planted this shit have a limited opportunity to use it.
Another act of war.
If Russia announced this they are already past the solution.
Putin making use of Snowden to raise discontent in US.
Good.
He must be one sore little ass-puppet...sorry asset, asset. I keep doing that.
Mirror, mirror...
I remember a news blurb about the kremlin installing lots of manual typwriters awhile back. Perhaps ink and paper are the new thing.
Yes, that was back when all the leaks first started, and mentioning hacks into other countries' high security computers. So Putin ordered all the old typewriters out of storage, dusted off and used, which sealed up a few leaks. They might have their own computers up and running by now.
All well and good until someone starts using carrier pigeons, then the air gap is breached
Ink paper and copy machines without internet capability
I am considering going back to rock carving of data, burried of course. Rocks are records - An Old Native American Saying.
You can always do clay tablets, and its easy to make copies, once fired no worries about them getting ruined by water.
We can't build it but sure as hell we can infect it!
well, at least the US leader is playing golf in Palm Springs and hanging with his guy buddies out there.
As opposed to dealing with his responsibilities -
NoVa
typo. not guy - gay
Chevy sold Novas in Mexico, but I think they had to change the name. In Spanish, 'no va' means '(it) doesn't go'.
:)
Well the Ford Probe name makes every man a bit tight cheeked if ya ask me.
The Subaru Brat sounds like a fart and reminds me of my sisters kid.
Mitsubishi sold a Montero SUV version as the "Pajero" in Latin America until they discovered that "Pajero" means "Wanker" in Spanish...
I don't believe the Commodore PET computer did well in France. Pet means fart in French (but spelled differently)
He's implementing the prime directive quite well as far as I can tell.
Zero Cool
See ya later Zerohedge. I'm going off the grid.
It's way too late for that.
Electricity? GRID.
Phone? GRID.
Drivers' license? GRID.
Debit or credit card? GRID.
Any car made after 06/95? GRID.
Live in a city (or travel to one) that allows cameras in public places? GRID.
Just the facts of the matter; nothing more. It's way too late for that.
Markets?
Derivatives and microwave towers based price control grid.
Hint: you're three solar panels, one bike, and one garden away from an answer.
I think you just like the blue pill too much. ;)
In Zionist America, Internet fap to you.
well, that's on them.
I'm not much to fap to.
The USA spyware programs are so good that nobody knows that they are there.
dhuuuu
NOTHING is secret move to telepathy
...Fucked up!
But I love the Death Star. Great Marketing!
A very subtle jibe by Kaspersky no doubt creating a (deserved) subconscious link between the US Deep State and the evil Star Wars empire, with the "rebels" being linked to the separatists of the Donbass...
just about time to turn the damn thing off
They've got another virus to prevent that from happening.
Or they may just turn it on while you're sleeping.
A virus that can reconnect the 115V from the wall would be impressive, I admit.
Don't worry they have been working on that for a while.
http://abc.cs.washington.edu/
(I know not exactly, but if they have this, what does NSA have?)
That looks like a commercial version of what labs and spies have been doing for years (decades).
Soo...does this mean my high score on crossyroad can be manipulated?
Well, once the U.S. controls the internet, I'm certain it will be safe again.....
Apple wallet and google pay are looking better every day!
They must impose net neutrality, can't let non-compliant players play, all that NSA shit is expensive and they don't fund it out if their NSA budget, its a cost shift.
"The U.S. National Security Agency..."
Correction: The National Security Agency
https://www.nsa.gov/
“The United States of America” appears to be the sub-brand
EXCELLENT POINT!
It's the CONUS INC. 'NSA'.
Probably traded on Dunn and fucking Bradstreet...
CyberWar will be really painful when they sick their nerds on our country. But then it will be called terrorism. How does any right minded human not consider this state-sponsored terrorism?
Not really a surprise, considering how the US has been working on offensive - as opposed to defensive - cyberattacks recently.
Recently?
I must admit that I find the cyberactivities of the NSA to be offensive. Why can't they just be like the SEC and sit there watching porn?
I guess this means Lois Lerner is going to jail. /s
No nukes needed for WW3?
The false flags become autonomous and anonymous. Malinvestment of human ingenuity to non-noble goals will be paid in blood, sweat and tears by all of us. Maybe the human experiment is to be self-terminated. I can't even think of a word in language that describes this behavior. It is beyond the realm of human history and experience. MAD is mad. Keep the love, it may be the only way out of the matrix. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
It sounds inhuman in a very human voice.
Damn rsssist, "White Buffalo."
I hate using that damn abacus ...
Just try networking them with a taut string.
But they will work when the power goes out and will not lose any current information if an EMP hits. Not too good with graphics, though.
I can never get more beads on there to make the books balance.
If I was in the business of Nanotechnology and had developed some meaningful nano invention, the last medium of communication I would use would be the interenet.
Max
Makes me even happier I use Kaspersky products.
You wouldn't need any such products if you used Linux.
You mean the code base for Android, and Mac OSX? That OS which you have to cobble together the ability to run Windoze apps....unreliably? Good luck with this. Good luck using it for the activities that 90% of the rest of the computing world is donig on Mac/Windoze. Those Open Orifice documents, spreadsheets, and presentations work so well in MS Orifice.
Linux has value...just not at the desktop.
The primary reason that Open Office/LibreOffice and Linux are not useful in enterprises is due to those enterprises having decided, long ago in many instances, to go with Windows and MS Office. Linux is fine at home or in situations where web-based applications are used, unless said applications require Internet Explorer, like Oracle Apps used to. (I don't know if those requirements still are in place.)
Even Microsoft is pushing its .NET stuff toward Linux. They must know something.
Bull shit. Linux desktops rock these days. using Microsoft desktops is like stepping back into the 1990's,
or in the case of Windows 8, its like stepping into a bad dream.
The first commercially viable system firewalls all ran... Linux or a BSD variant.
While Linux is not completely safe, it is *orders of magnitude *(as in light years) safer than Microsoft, and since Apple is a closed system so you can't see what it is doing, it is safer than OS X as well...
If you want create a safe platform, you can't beat Linux, particularly if you write your own compiler (any serious CS major can do this), compile your own compiler, and then your kernel, and your applications.
Make no mistake that this is how the Chinese and Russians maintain their safety.
If you want *REALLY SAFE*, grab a Raspberry Pi and do the above. These little devices are becoming seriously powerful and everything is within view...
Seems like a wonderful opportunity to mass market these systems. Far beyond people like me to cobble them together and maintain them.
Please keep it up, we need more bot clients.
Open source is great...til it ain't.
Linux computers don't use hard drives?
All computers use hdd.
Except those that don't. I have two systems that boot from a microSD card. No hard drive, no solid state drive...some PCs can boot across a network, although that requires some sort of storage device somewhere else. Or you can boot from a CD, USB stick, or even, gasp, a floppy disk. Not to belabor the point, but the BIOS initiates the booting, loading an operating system from some storage device and then transferring control to the OS.
I guess it depends on how you define 'computer'.
Trival File Transfer Protocol
Network File System
Hard drives are loud and require more cooling, no.
Linux computers can boot off the network without using any hard drive at all, or can boot from a USB stick, or a microSD (that's how Raspberry Pi's run), or a CD, BluRay, or DVD drive, or a floppy if you are really retro and masochistic - again, without any "hard disk" even installed on the system.
Try doing any of those with a Windows machine (and good luck)
WindowsToGo can boot off a USB stick. Its a full version of windows 8.1. If you have a fast stick it runs very fast...think SSD fast. You can boot it even on older computers (although its usually a lot slower because of usb 2.0)... Obviously flash drives have their own risks.
If the NSA is controlling the firmware on your hard drive it does not matter what os your box is using. Linux, OSX, OS/2 (well, maybe that one is safe), Windoze, etc.
Simply remove it and boot from a live OS CD.
Your CD/DVD drive doesn't have firmware?
That is not necessarily true. The secret to security is to have layers of protection, and to "change species".
If you are worried about the internet being a problem, run something like X.25 in one of the hops - they probably weren't expecting that...
Run a full application level proxy for WWW surfing... If you set this up right, attempts to exfiltrate from your machine will fall on the floor and die.
E.g. about the "species" thing - a Linux system is immune to malware designed for Windows machines. A BSD machine is immune to malware designed for Linux machines.
Its the fancy, higher level applications that are machine independent that are a problem - JAVA that runs everywhere for example.
No doubt that Kapersky has talent.
However, how do we know who is watching the watcher?
Gee kinda looks like Bill Gates & Apple made a deal with the feds, he supports their agenda they let him do whatever.
Gates foundation seems to push congress' favorite agenda mass immigration, mass immigration pushes the police state, and police state monitoring.
I doubt they "made a deal." More like they weren't given a choice.
The other thing is, which feds? It's pretty clear the non-secret agencies are super pissed about losing access to data due to encryption, and I don't buy that it's an act. I also don't believe for a moment the NSA hasn't compromised the phones, so that tells me we've got at least two factions of have and have-nots in the federal government with respect to spying on us using technology.
always thought steve jobs cancer was poisoning due to his opposition to some nsa request.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81xnvgOlHaY
A whole technogoy revolution is being derailed and contravened and inverted.
What the fuck would have happened if fire or the combustion engine or alternating current had been rendered unusable by vast swathes of the world due to purposefully engineered malware and remotely activated utility impairments and disruptions?
The greedy ideologically obsessed security/police state assholes are subverting progress and commerce and human cooperation on a scale to vast to measure...
Liberty and human progress demands that this cease.
Yes, that's the basic plot to the Netflix series "Revolution"
IMHO, such subversion of technological progress and inhibition/destruction of the function of deployed infrastructures meets the definitions of both WAR and crimes against humanity.
The first country/companies that can certify spyware free hardware/software will be the new winners during and after the forth turning.
Nowadays, you can't invent a fucking think without some corporation claiming that they own it because they own you, or that they tried that years ago, and it wasn't worth patenting.
Obumerang is Obumerangging
Fixed it.
I'm waiting for the point where technology just eats itself.
Who knew the battle fields would fit in your pocket. Great article
This is why Russia is great nation=) We are not only found it, but we also shared it with the world.
And likely knew about it for ten years or more before sharing. The timing here isn't accidental, and was hardly motivated by altruism.
Regardless of the motives, though, more transparency is alway better than less.
This information will contribute to the ongoing meltdown of NSA's spying capabilities. I'm surprised the researcher's plane made it to the conference without incident.
Probably correct about how long they've known about it.
Which leaves a very interesting question; just how much misinformation has the NSA taken,hook,
line and sinker as gospel ?
I don't know but USA are very angry=)
I would bet it's Israel that is pissed, not the US.
Everybody likes to poke a stick in the eye of Numero Uno-- so long as they think its safe to do so.
One has to wonder, why put people in prison for hacking when the government is doing the hacking 24/7? We've become nonchalant to criminal activities when it is done by a guy with a cheap ID badge from a vague alphabet agency. It is still a criminal offence, serious enough to warrant hysterics from the msm and the president himself when Sony's email was alledgely hacked, but it's the sound of deafening crickets when the real criminals in government do it.
Blatant lies upon lies about the extent of the NSA's blanket surveillance have been told in public, in Congress, in the msm for years even before the Snowden revelations. Yet James Clapper is not in prison. Robert Litt, Eric Holder, and all the others in the so-called Justice Dept who protect criminals in government are not in prison for perverting the course of justice. The whole system is rotten and disgusting to behold. These are actual, real, proven, glaring crimes and the inmates of the asylum keep giving each other free passes to continue their gangster empire beyond the dreams of fascism.
I can hardly express my disgust with the hypocrisy, lies and double standards of the "leadership" in this country.....
The whole system is rotten and disgusting to behold. These are actual, real, proven, glaring crimes and the inmates of the asylum keep giving each other free passes to continue their gangster empire beyond the dreams of fascism.
"."
Well said YH
RT News has been having a field day with these revelations as well they should, but this capture by Tyler with the 44 page report simply makes you sicker.
Well at least we can say the Edward Snowden gave us the "palate cleanser" of all palate cleansers on the extent of NSA's reach before he selected a new home? Next to Binney, Tice and Drake I don't believe they have any volunteers coming out since.
But after what Kaspersky just revealed with this they won't need too.
Think typewriters and "white out" are going to be in vogue for a while among the BRICS until they start building all of the requisite computer components themselves...
Let's face it. The forest was already on fire. But now with this news the Western establishment understands that there won't be a drop of rain in site for the rest of the year and somebody in the process switched water in the fire hose with gasoline!!!
looks like my next home PC will be Russian!!!
Be sure and buy some extra vacuum tubes.
Unless you build your own system from scratch, and I mean manufacturing everything on it and writing your own OS, you will always have a friend sitting with you at your desk. And no matter who that friend is, sooner or later your friend will also have their friends keeping you company as well. No matter which friend you start out with.
The Internet has been fun, but do we really need it?
In Soviet Russia, internet hacks YOU!
This phenomenon applies to every crime and atrocity. We'll said and good to see you
Exactly. The list just goes on, doesn't it? Hello mate. Didn't recognize you at first with your new avatar, which just goes to show my memory depends far too much on images. Good to see you too. Hope you're doing well.
Why put people in prison? To keep all the power to themselves, silly! Can't have plebes wielding the 21st century version of nukes now, can we?
I suspect that our government not only wants hacking to be illegal, but probably frowns on private research that isn't on a short leash. Which lead me to wonder.. could Kaspersky really be the only ones that spotted this? Who are the biggest firms?
Symantec (USA) $6B in reveneue.
Kaspersky (Russian) has revenues of about $600 million.
F-Secure (Finland) about $200M.
Avast (Czech/German) ?? (small), BitDefender (Romania) ?? (small), Panda (Spain) fairly small, WebRoot (US) small, partnered with RSA (that should set off alarm bells).
Something tells me that Symantec, a company ten times the size of Kaspersky, knows about this, and said nothing. F-Secure might have known. The rest are probably too small to see this sort of thing or have resources to examine it.
All very good, valid points. You left out Intel/McAfee's $2 billion+ in revenue. I stopped installing the big names in security years ago and do the occasional sweep of my hard drives from another machine. Not that I expect to be protected - hardware exploits are almost impossible to defend against without more resources so I do the minimum to keep the most obvious and annoying hacks at bay.
Good point, I'd completely forgotten about McAfee since their consumer presence is so low these days. I'd have to imagine they'd have known about this as well.
Interesting, What's the chance of TPTB want to put a bad light on McAfee because he wasn't willing to go along?
Kaspersky might have received some hints from Snowden.
Some of Snowden's info was never published, perhaps most of it.
But of course, Kaspersky started this quest with Stuxnet, perhaps before. Before Snowden.
Justice or "just us"?
Yes, the courts and the legal world rotten to the core... after all, the prosecutors office is essentially the minor leagues for political office, where professional liars cut their teeth lying to juries before the graduate to lying to the country and the world.
With all the computers in the world can anybody tell me how many have Intel chips and who owns Intel. Just asking.
The installed base for PCs hovers around 1.5 billion systems (more or less), and about 85% of those are Intel (the rest AMD.)
Intel is publicly held, mostly by large institutional investors.
But desktops (and laptops!) are a dying market. The most common operating system in the world is
LINUX
And most likely, the most common CPU in the world is probably the ARM, hands down.
What most people forget is that Android -- is LINUX, with some specialized Google applications running on top. You can literally download the source code for most of Android and compile it yourself.
Android of course is running on most of the cell phones in the world (Apple may have the top end of the smartphone market, but most of the world buys cheaps Android Samsungs, ZTEs or Xiaomis), and on most of the tablets.
These CPUs and devices are equal in power to the computers of only a few years ago - the desktop is a dead man walking in its present form, and Intel knows this, and so does Windows. Hence the Windows Phones, Windows 8, or the Intel "Atom" design trying to force its way into the party - the latest Samsung tablets have shifted to Intel processors, for example, but its too little too late... ARM learned how to do multi-core several years ago, and already know how to do economies of scale, so Intel has a toughmountain to climb...
Bullish NASDAQ! Can't wait for MSNBC's analysis on this one?...
Market opens in approximately 13 hours 16 minutes and 22 seconds!!!!!.........
Korean and Twainese hard drive manufactorers. I wonder about the diplomatic policy of those two nations.. oh yes. They are vassals too.
I can see Western Digital and Seagate but Samsung. Samsung recently got into the hdd game, the NSA moves fast.
What...you think that everything in the recent US/S Korea "free trade" agreement was made public?
IF they do not comply, THEY WILL FAIL.
I remember Conner HDD's back in the olden days.
they shrunk the number of players so they have an easier time to THREATEN or Bribe.
Haven't heard that name in a long time. Most the pc component game is run and supplied by foreign interest (China is big but Korea is huge *cough* Samsung*cough*), which is why this new low suprises me, I can see some (but not all) being complicit in this. As you alluded to, one of those "Offers you can't refuse."
Fuck. No wonder certain people lose their marbles, like Hastings.
"extraordinary skills and unlimited resources"
Yet, the propaganda machine wants everybody to believe those "most sophisticated cyberattacks ever" every other week are coming from like third world countries or some "groups".
(BTW, does unlimited also mean unaudited money printing, that in turn actually also helps to siphon resources from those places?)
"figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba"
I take, they also want everybody to believe they just figured it out. To imagine something like American and Japanese corporations colluding with giant state agencies in a crony capitalist system with features like cross-shareholding and Wall Street sponsored politicians, that would be outrageous conspiracy theorizing.
(BTW, following that theory would lead us back to the first point.)
Anyway, apparently, even those "extraordinary skills and unlimited resources" are not enough anymore. Because a brand new agency is coming "to sniff out threats in cyberspace".
The agency will be "modeled after the National Counterterrorism Center, which was launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-to-cre...
To your last point I will add: THERE IS NO PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET.
Never forget. There will come a moment...
The worlds largest public network.
Soooo l1ke wh3n I f@p in front 0f my w3b cam @ L0T OF PE0PL3 C@N c ME?
sH1T.
Figuring out how to make an alternative firmware operate on a well-known device takes no more effort than writing the original firmware in the first place; there may be some additional space constraints (hmmm, where to stash our infection payload...), but determining which machine code needs to be in place and writing a firmware update virus aren't nearly as "extraordinary" as the mainstream plebs would have one believe...mostly in support of the fear-mongering and statecraft you mentioned.
Thankfully, most of the people with the skills to do this stuff apply them with more efficacy elsewhere.
I wonder when the NSA will order billions of bullets to arm their enforcement team....
One full mag will get you twenty more.
live by the sword, die by the sword
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaR3WO71j4
Not a problem. Only concern is with computers on this planet that are interconnected. Every hacker knows that no computer or device is secure if it is connected directly or indirectly to computers outside of its own network--and often not even then.
That is the main reason that the internet laws being passed are for control of the general population and not because of security. If it is over a cloud or the internet it is public bitchez.
Was there an expectation of privacy .... in free Internet .... let me sell you a bridge !
Russian propaganda. You'll be drinking Stoli in no time.
I like Grey Goose.
At least Stoli doesn't use the GMO crap the US manufacturers must use.
The Ruskis are smarter and banned US GMO shit years ago.
Rodnik Samara Brewery
"Russian propaganda. You'll be drinking Stoli in no time."
Stolichnaya vodka sold in the U.S. is made in... Latvia, not Russia. Check the label.
Anyone who underestimates their enemy is toast.
Oh huge surprise here.
My overpriced, neutral grain (CORN) spirit .... is better than yours .... mine has a suttle cachet .... a hint corn on the cob !
Ill give you one good reason Israel isnt on any of these lists....
They're racists ?
They don't need to be in this list because their slaves (US) are they one doing all the dirty work.
I am thinking that Ed Snowden is working for or doing consulting with Kaspersky Labs... interesting.
No wonder Tea Party foggots like Rubio want him behind bars.
and the Democrats want him killed.....this is beyond sheeple politics
"I am thinking that Ed Snowden is working for or doing consulting with Kaspersky Labs... interesting."
You are way underestimating skills and sophistication of Russian IT professionals. Kaspersky nailed Stuxnet in 2010, before Edward Snowden's revelations and subsequent political asylum in Russian Federation.
Worth to mention here is that not only their legit IT guys are really good but their cybercriminals are also #1 in the world, or so it seems:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11414191/Hackers-steal-650-...
So if Kaspersky and Snowden are working together.....
well do you know or not? if so give us a LINK
This story is all the more reason why Washington must destroy Russia, at all cost that government must be replaced with reliable puppets. Zionist puppets, like the type now in Kiev, working to make Ukraine a puppet slave state.
we are all living in amerika, its wunderbar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NteVmdoo1yI
Bazactly!