When Know How Gets Loose: Excitement Ensues
May 23, 2019
Bad actor hackers are pains in the rear, especially when they steal personal information. They are even worse when they steal from the government and use the stolen information for nefarious purposes. From The Trenches World Report explains the how and why about the hackers in that “China Used NSA Cyber weapon To Hack Targets, Symantec Says.”
The NSA developed a hacking tool dubbed “Double Pulsar” that can secretly download malware onto Windows-based PCs. Chinese hackers stole it, put their stamp on it, and used it on unsuspecting victims back in 2016. There was evidence that the altered Black Pulsar paired with another Chinese hacking tool were used in attacks in Belgium and Hong Kong. What is even worse is that the Chinese hacking tool could only hack 32-bit systems, but was revamped to attack 64-bit systems with newer Windows versions.
It is unknown how the alleged Chinese hackers obtained Double Pulsar. The possible theories are that an NSA server with bad security or a NSA employee went rogue. Another idea is that the hackers collected some NSA traffic that contained Double Pulsar..
“Whatever the case may be, the findings underscore the risks of NSA cyber weapons falling into the wrong hands. Double Pulsar, itself, is no longer a secret. In April 2017, a mysterious party called the Shadow Brokers went online and dumped a cache of NSA hacking tools, which included details on Double Pulsar. A month later, the same NSA hacking tools were used to launch Wannacry, a ransomware attack that hit Windows machines across the world.
Who the Shadows Brokers are remains a mystery. But according to Symantec, the Chinese hacking group that gained access to Double Pulsar no longer appears to be active. In Nov. 2017, the US publicly charged three members of the group with hacking crimes and intellectual property theft.”
One more hacking tool is now an open source piece. DarkCyber is not keen on certain types of technology becoming widely available.
Whitney Grace, May 23, 2018
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