Kaspersky ,society has discovered a group of pirates using sophisticated malware , who settled in the heart of the hard drives. Their a...
Kaspersky ,society has discovered a group of pirates using sophisticated malware , who settled in the heart of the hard drives. Their activities were related to the American intelligence agency.
For at least fourteen years, a group of hackers has managed to conduct hundreds oflarge-scale attacks in 30 countries, without ever being disturbed. Named "Equation",this group was outed by computer security firm Kaspersky, in a survey publishedTuesday. Revealed suggests that these pirates were related to the NSA, theAmerican intelligence agency who designed program PRISM of surveillance of theNet.
Kaspersky never named the NSA in its report. The approximation equation is thenature of the weapons used. One of the viruses developed by the group in 2008,called Fanny, uses the same faults of safeties that Stuxnet, a spyware program thatwas spying on Iranian nuclear infrastructure. "Use similar same faults on two differentviruses in a close time, indicates that the Group Equation and the developers ofStuxnet are the same people or work closely together," says the report. The faultswere even used in Fanny before Stuxnet. However, according to the revelations ofthe alerts Launcher Edward Snowden, the NSA and Israel have co-authored Stuxnet.Another clue malicious software from Equation included in their code the same namea NSA tool unveiled by The Intercept last March, underlines the ArsTechnica website.
Undetectable malware:
More than 500 infected computers have been detected by Kaspersky, in 42countries whose many monitored by the United States: Iran, Pakistan, Syria, etc. TheFrance would have been affected to a lesser extent. The first Equation operationdates back to 2001, "perhaps even 1996" says the report. The targets ranged fromGovernments to the antennae diplomatic, military, media, Islamic organizations orsectors of telecoms, hydrocarbons, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, finance.
Fanny and Stuxnet aimed both computers "air-gapped", i.e. not connected to theInternet. Fanny could hide in an invisible part of a USB key, when the key wasconnected to a non-connected computer it analyzed its data. One of the othermodes of contamination through damaged Web pages. Kaspersky cites the case offorums of discussions djihadites or advertisements on popular sites in the Middle East.
The malicious software infected a specific part of the hard drive, its internalsoftware, and remained invisible. To achieve this feat, the creators of the programhad to know the source code of the target computer's hard disk. Former agentscontacted by the Reuters news agency confirmed that the NSA was able to hidespyware in many major manufacturers, such as Western Digital or Toshiba harddrives. Many of these manufacturers have denied to Reuters have knowledge ofspyware of Equation. Western Digital said that the company was not communicatingthe source code of its hard drives to governmental agencies.
"The star of the death of the Galaxy of malware.:
Kaspersky portrayed Equation as one of the most experienced hackers in the world.It "transcends all that is known in terms of complexity and sophistication of the techniques' and 'single in almost all aspects of its activities '. Never to run out ofsuperlatives, he nicknamed same Equation "star of the death of the Galaxy ofmalware.
Kaspersky takes the bulk of its revenue from computer sales of antivirus andprotection. It's best interest to present his discoveries and the threats that it revealsas a major. Monday, February 16, the company unveiled a suite of hackings of banksthat led to the flight of 300 million dollars from 2013. "It is probably the mostsophisticated attack in the world in terms of tactics and methods", stated the leaderAmerica of North of Kaspersky, Chris Doggett told the New York Times.
Several of the vulnerabilities exploited by Equation were nicknamed 'zero-day',security vulnerabilities which have not yet been discovered or used, and whichrequire a high level of expertise. These faults are in the crosshairs of all largecompanies. This summer, Google launched Project Zero, a former pirates teamassembled to track down and repair faults 'zero-day '.
