HACKERS STILL ACTIVE

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By Mark Phillips ¦ Blog.TotalAV.com ¦ Updated 22nd May 2017, 06.14 EDT

The Shadow Brokers, who recently became one of the world’s most notorious cyber attack groups after leaking a stolen hacking tool from the US National Security Agency, is threatening to release even more tools.

In a harrowing message, the group raised alarm bells by stating they would be launching a paid membership scheme from June which will allow fellow cyber criminals to receive more computer hacking tools and vulnerability exploits on a monthly basis.

“Its being like wine of month club,” Shadow Brokers said on social blogging platform, Steemit. “Each month peoples can be paying membership fee, then getting members only data dump each month. What members doing with data after is up to members.”

In addition, they threatened to release stolen data from the international banking network as well as the covert information of Russian, Iranian, Chinese and North Korean missile and nuclear programs.Shadow Brokers, whose orchestrators remain faceless and completely unknown, first entered the headlines last year after listing a stolen collection of the US National Security Agency’s hacking tools online.

Though little is known of the group, analysts believe its members are operating out of Russia or Eastern Europe, and that the hacking tools and files are authentic, having originated in the NSA’s top secret hacking unit known as the “Equation Group”.

Shadow Brokers’ suite of troublesome tech included the NSA’s exploit tool for a Microsoft Windows vulnerability that was utilized in the very recent “WannaCry” ransomware attack.

The impact of that attack was globally catastrophic, with the NHS, among a host of other organisations and institutions, suffering infections on hundreds of thousands of their computers.

Though Shadow Brokers initially released the hacking tools, it is not believed that the group is responsible for carrying out the attack itself. Amidst the ongoing investigation, some analysts have speculated that there could be a link with North Korea.

In a new message, Shadow Brokers accused the Equation Group of not issuing warnings to developers such as Microsoft of key vulnerabilities that open their globally-used software to malicious malware and viruses.

“The Shadow Brokers is not being interested in stealing grandmothers’ retirement money,” the group wrote. “This is always being about the Shadow Brokers vs the Equation Group.” They also wrote that future leaks of hacking tools and stolen information could be prevented if the NSA or another “responsible party” bought back the stolen data.

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