Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Your HDDs were riddled with NSA spyware for years...

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has infected hard disk firmware with spyware in a campaign valued as highly as Stuxnet that dates back at least 14 years and possibly up to two decades, according to an analysis by Kaspersky Labs.

The campaign infected possibly tens of thousands of computers in telecommunications providers, governments, militaries, utilities, and mass media organisations among others in more than 30 countries.

The agency is said to have compromised hard drive firmware for more than a dozen top brands, including Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, Toshiba, Samsung and Maxtor, Kaspersky researchers revealed.

Reuters reports sources formerly working with the NSA confirmed the agency was responsible for the attacks, which Kaspersky doesn't lay at the feet of the agency.

Kaspersky's analysis says the NSA made a breakthrough by infecting hard disk firmware with malware known only as nls_933w.dll capable of persisting across machine wipes to re-infect targeted systems. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. How to stop NSA from snooping on you...
  2. Is Big Brother spying on your computer – with your own cell phone?
  3. NSA spying: why it matters...
  4. USA spent $136 billion on spying in two years...
  5. Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters...

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