Hacking group, The Shadow Brokers has published the password to a trove of hacking tools used by NSA exploits as a form of protest against President Donald Trump for going back on his campaign promises. The group published a warning on Medium for the president, “Don’t forget your base.”
The group has also leaked a toolkit. Some security experts tweeted that the password works, but that couldn't be independently verified. The leaked database also includes several IP and hosts based out in India.
The Shadow Brokers wanted Trump to live on his promises and make America great again. The Shadow brokers questioned Trump’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, Mr. Bannon’s removal from the NSC, US military strike on Syria, and successful vote for SCOTUS without change rules and Trump's attacks on some congressional Republicans.
The first archive was containing roughly 300MBs of data, including firewall exploits, hacking tools, and scripts with cryptonyms like BANANAUSURPER, BLATSTING, and BUZZDIRECTION.The Equation Group ‘s hackers targeted products made by Cisco, Fortigate, Juniper, TOPSEC and Watchguard.
The password provided by Shadow Brokers unlocks the hacking tools, which include servers belonging to companies and universities which are allegedly used to deploy malware, according to researchers who have examined some of the documents. WikiLeaks tweeted the dump includes “hacking attacks on EU states, Russia, China, Japan and South East Asia.”
NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden has confirmed that the leak included authentic NSA software. The leak doesn’t contain the entire spy tools library, Snowden tweeted. However, he added that “NSA should be able to instantly identify where this set came from and how they lost it. If they can’t, it’s a scandal.”
The Shadow brokers also asked Trump to stop concentrating on the concept of globalism which will not make America self-centred. They are of the view that people should stay in their own countries. They hit out at India also, saying: “If cultures, beliefs, and philosophies of Africa, Asia, and India is being so cool and awesome, why isn’t everyone immigrating there? Because it’s not and they aren’t. European or Western Culture has proven is being best and most dominant.”
The shadowy group first emerged last October and released hacking exploits used by the NSA’s Equation Group, which included vulnerabilities in firewall products and a list of IP addresses the NSA had exploited, which the group released at a later date. The experts said that the leak information might identify computers used to obscure US electronic eavesdropping.
The Equation group compromised these targets using the hacking tools code named as INTONATION and PITCHIMPAIR. The Shadow Brokers provided the links to two distinct PGP-encrypted archives, the first one offered for free as a proof of the hack (its passphrase was ‘auctioned’), for the second one the group requested 1 million BTC.
Such warning to Trump may block India’s prospects in US. As has Trump already announced, his ruling may prove a threat to Indian tech experts and Silicon Valley.
