In August 2016 the Equation Group, aka the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division of the NSA, attracted unwanted headlines with reports that anonymous attackers had hacked into the group and made off with critical intelligence plus high-end malware. The purported hackers, known as “The Shadow Brokers,” made their success known by publishing 300 megabytes of unencrypted data … [Read more...]
Automated Cybersecurity: Machines Still Have a Long Way To Go
With summer 2016 coming to an end it is fitting to recap one of the season's signature events that, while now largely forgotten, may portend breakneck change in the years to come: DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge, the world's first attempt at automated cybersecurity in the never ending war against bugs, viruses, Zero Days and malware. Nearly 30 months after announcing … [Read more...]
Equation Group and the Real Dunces of the Zero Day Leak – Cisco and Juniper
By now the news of a purported hack at the NSA revealing a 2013 suite of Zero Days, and their link to the agency's Technical Analytics Organization (TAO) aka The Equation Group, has been analyzed ad infinitum. Most conclude -- prematurely, we believe -- that the leak of such a large cache of Zero Day vulnerabilities and exploits represents a huge embarrassment for the NSA, as … [Read more...]
Off the Rails: Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Surveillance
When the United Kingdom added “intrusive” surveillance technologies to the Wassenaar Arrangement list of “weapons” in late 2013, analysts speculated whether the handwriting was on the wall for some ISS vendors. If adopted by member nations of the Arrangement, the rules would place stricter export licensing requirements not only on lawful malware but also on Zero Days, IMSI … [Read more...]
Zero Days vs. Malware — What’s the Difference?
In the popular mind, Zero Days and Malware – including Trojans, bots, bugs, rootkits, worms, spyware and other forms – are commonly lumped together under the general heading of viruses and more recently “cyber attacks.” While the latter term is appropriate as a generic catch-all, it is important for law enforcement to understand the difference between Zero Days and Malware as … [Read more...]