Online Security Leaked NSA point-and-pwn hack
tools menace Win2k to Windows 8
Microsoft claims it has patched most of the exploited bugs
Updated The Shadow Brokers have leaked more hacking tools stolen from the NSA's Equation
Group – this time four-year-old exploits that attempt to hijack venerable Windows systems,
from Windows 2000 up to Server 2012 and Windows 7 and 8.
The toolkit puts into anyone's hands – from moronic script kiddies to hardened crims – highly
classified nation-state-level weaponry that can potentially compromise and commandeer
systems around the world. This is the same powerful toolkit Uncle Sam used once upon a time to
hack into and secretly snoop on foreign governments, telcos, banks, and other organizations.
The files range from Microsoft Windows exploits to tools for monitoring SWIFT interbank
payments. Ongoing analysis of the leaked documents and executables has revealed Cisco
firewalls and VPN gateways are also targets.
The Shadow Brokers tried auctioning off the stolen cyber-weapons to the highest bidder, but
when that sale flopped with no buyers, the team started releasing the gear online for free
anyway.
"The shadow brokers not wanting going there. Is being too bad nobody deciding to be paying the
shadow brokers for just to shut up and going away," the group said in a typically garbled blog
post.
"The Shadow Brokers rather being getting drunk with McAfee on desert island with hot babes.
Maybe if all surviving WWIII the shadow brokers are seeing you next week. Who knows what we
having next time?"