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Hacker Group Shadow Brokers Say They Have NSA Cyberweapons Files For Sale

Shadow Brokers claim to have NSA Cyberweapons for sale

A group of hackers called Shadow Brokers are claiming to have acquired NSA cyberweapons, and are auctioning them off to the highest bidder.

A secretive group of hackers calling themselves “Shadow Brokers” claim that they have hacked into NSA affiliates Equation Group, and stolen high-tech NSA cyberweapons. The group claimed to have hacked into Equation Group’s database and stolen malware developed for the American government’s National Security Agency, also known as the NSA.

The group announced the claim and posted samples of the source codes on their Tumblr page, and informed people that they will be auctioning the US government’s spying and surveillance tools for at least half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin.

Similar top secret files were made public when NSA contractor Edward Snowden decided to break the silence, and disclosed of hundreds of thousands of secret documents about NSA mass-surveillance programs. According to Foreign Policy, some of the code words in the samples posted by Shadow Brokers were included in the Snowden leaks.

in 2015, anti-virus giant Kaspersky documented more than 500 malware infections created by the shady Equation Group, and backed up the theory of their NSA affiliation by stating that the two were using similar, if not identical tools and encryption methods.

Just a short while after Shadow Brokers’ announcement, the whistleblowing organization Wikileaks publicized that they have already obtained a full copy of the NSA’s cyberweapons, and will released them “in due course”.

The US government has been exposed to data theft for a while now, with several insider whistleblowers exposing mass-surveillance plots and shady government operations. The most famous whistleblowers are Chelsea Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence in a US jail, and Edward Snowden, who is on asylum in Russia.

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