China Hijacked an NSA Hacking Tool in 2014 and Used It for Years | WIRED

China Hijacked an NSA Hacking Tool in 2014—and Used It for Years
The hackers used the agency’s EpMe exploit to attack Windows devices years before the Shadow Brokers leaked the agency’s zero-day arsenal online.
NSA headquarters
PHOTOGRAPH: AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES
MORE THAN FOUR years after a mysterious group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers began wantonly leaking secret NSA hacking tools onto the internet, the question that debacle raised—whether any intelligence agency can prevent its "zero-day" stockpile from falling into the wrong hands—still haunts the security community. That wound has now been reopened, with evidence that Chinese hackers obtained and reused another NSA hacking tool years before the Shadow Brokers brought it to light.



Andy Greenberg is a senior writer for WIRED, covering security, privacy, and information freedom. He’s the author of the book Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers. The book and excerpts from it published in WIRED won a Gerald Loeb Award for... Read more
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