A group of mysterious hackers calling themselves "Shadow Brokers" claims to have hacked is the source code to a vaunted, likely state-sponsored hacking group many believe is hacked a group linked to the NSA and dumped a bunch of its hacking tools.
The Shadow Brokers are auctioning source code purportedly from the Equation Group and are asking for 1 million bitcoin to release more files.
“Attention government sponsors of cyber warfare and those who profit from it,” writes the Shadow Brokers in an auction notice, which journalist Brian Krebs said, "reads like a script."
“How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? Not malware you find in networks… We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons.”
The auction will hold in a very usual method, they told all the interested parties to send their max offer in bitcoin. The group will keep all the funds, and says it will send the highest bidder the code.
If the action raises 1 million bitcoin — about half a billion dollars — Shadow Brokers promises to put even more files out for sale.
The files were initially posted to the code-sharing site GitHub, which has since disabled access.