How Chinese spies got N.S.A's Hacking Tools and used them for attack
For US intelligence agencies, Symantec's discovery presents a kind of worst-case scenario that US officials have said they are trying to avoid using a White House program called the Vulnerability Shares.
During the process started in the Obama administration, a white house, cybersecurity coordinator and representatives of various governments weigh the balances of keeping the US store of unknown vulnerabilities secret. Representatives discuss the storage of these intelligence gathering or military use vulnerabilities against the very real risk that they might be discovered by an opponent like the Chinese and used to hack Americans.
The Shadow Brokers & # 39; release of the NSA's highest-sought hacking tool in 2016 and 2017 forced the agency to transform its arsenal of software issues into Microsoft for patching and to shut down some of the NSA's most sensitive counter-terrorist operations, two former NSA employees said.
NSA's tools were picked up by North Korean and Russian hackers and used for attacks that crawled British healthcare, interrupted operations at the shipping company Maersk and cut short critical supplies of a vaccine produced by Merck. In Ukraine, the Russian attacks paralyzed critical Ukrainian services, including the airport, postal service, gas stations and A.T.M.s.
"None of the decisions that go into the process are risk-free. It's just not how these things work," said Michael Daniel, president of the Cyber Threat Alliance, formerly a cyber security coordinator for the Obama administration. Strengthens the need to have a thoughtful process involving many different stocks and is often updated. "
Beyond the nation's intelligence services, the process involves agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department who want to secure NSA Vulnerabilities will not be discovered by opponents. or criminals and returning to US infrastructure, such as hospitals and banks, or interests abroad.
That's exactly what happened in Symantec's recent findings, Chien said. In the future, he said US officials should factor in it real likelihood that their own tools will boomerang back on US targets or allies alsmann said the agency had no immediate comment on the Symantec report.
