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The US already has a cyber superweapon

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 23 Feb 2015, 11:37am

The US already has a cyber superweapon

 Guess which agency is in charge.

Last year was a banner year for hackers and cyber crime, especially for the entertainment industry. With the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack, the world has finally started to wake up to the threats that cyber warfare will bring in the coming years. While it was a targeted attack at a corporation, it could have easily been aimed at destabilizing a major national organization. When the smoke settled, the US fingered North Korea as the culprit, owing to spyware embedded in North Korean networks that led them being able to track the attacks. After that though, nothing happened.

We (and a lot of others) figured a major overhaul of US cyber security was in the works. That never materialized, all we got was President Obama announcing he was proposing to have Congress pass a cyber security resolution in his State of the Union address in January this year. Many felt that it was too little and too slow, especially for a massive national security matter such as cyber warfare.

Now we know why President Obama wasn't in a rush to create stronger cyber defenses; he'd be weakening his nation's cyber warfare capabilities in the process.

Kaspersky's GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) has revealed that they've managed to uncover evidence of NSA malware that are much more advanced than previously thought to have existed. The GReAT has dubbed the group behind the malware, the Equation Group, though Wired thinks that the Equation Group is the infamous Tailored Access Operations unit that Edward Snowden brought to the spotlight in 2013.

Of the malware encountered by the Kaspersky team, one can embed itself in the OS of whatever system it encounters, which makes it virtually undetectable to most mainstream anti-virus software while it does its duty. Once embedded, the software creates a little niche for itself, storing away bits of relevant data which it'll send out via network or other means. It can even be updated remotely without anybody knowing, as well as accept custom plugins. One such plugin can even overwrite a hard drive's firmware, which means it'll remain in place even after a reformat. Kaspersky's team thinks that tens of thousands (perhaps even more) computers worldwide have been infiltrated by the NSA with the users unaware they're being spied on.

It all becomes clear now, doesn't it? With such a strong offensive weapon at their fingertips, effective cyber defense (which will inevitably be used by other nations and organizations) only weakens its capabilities. After all, what's the use of having a bullet if all your targets have measures in place to stop it?

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