I’m not sure whether I should be impressed or scared at how
effective the NSA’s spy program is.
Recently, Russian researchers at security agency Kaspersky discovered
malware that is hidden in the firmware of hard drives on computers. When the hard
drive boots up after turning on the computer, the smart virus is also booted up
as part of the process of turning on the computer. When hacking, the firmware
is regarded as the second most valuable code on a PC. The virus is able to
infect the computer repeatedly due to its location in a computers code. This is
such a brilliant technique for spying considering how it has gone unnoticed for
so long and the code’s location allows the NSA to bypass security and spy on
targets with ease.
I can’t help but be in awe at how this tactic has
essentially placed the NSA in a position where they can monitor whoever they
want with ease. Previously, I never would have thought that the NSA had an open
door into whoever’s computer they choose given that their smart virus was
already embedded into the hard drive’s operation. I think this is some really
cool technology! Instead of hacking the traditional way with password cracking,
denial of service, worms, viruses, IP spoofing, access through source routing,
man in the middle attack, server spoofing, or DNS poisoning, the NSA has
literally gone down to the core of how a computer works and placed their code
into the firmware of hard drives manufactured by companies.
The companies Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, IBM, Micro
Technology, and Samsung were discovered to have the virus on their drives. According
to Kaspersky, this virus could not have been placed in the firmware easily and it
would be incredibly difficult with what is public knowledge about the drivers. Western
Digital, Seagate, and Micron stated they did not know about the malware,
Toshiba and Samsung declined to comment, and IBM did not respond to reporters. I
suspect these companies must have cooperated with the government to hand over
the source code for their hard drives either knowingly or unknowingly. Western
Digital declared that they did not provide any of its source code to the US
government. If this is true, it makes me wonder how the NSA was able to place
its code on the company’s chips. The technology being used by the NSA is even
more impressive after hearing Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu state that,
“There
is zero chance that someone could rewrite the [hard drive] operating system
using public information.” After reading all this, one can only wonder how
exactly does the NSA obtain the proprietary source code for so many different companies' hard drives?
Kaspersky stated they found the virus on some hard drives dating
back to 2001. Most of the infected computers were found in countries such as
Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen, and Algeria. It
seems like most of the NSA targets were unstable countries which house terrorists
and the others are potential threats or competition to the United States’ interests.
While it’s safe to say that the American public is most
likely not being spied on regularly by the NSA, it is comforting to hear from the
researchers that the NSA is quite selective when it comes to eavesdropping,
stealing files, and taking full remote control over a device.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/russian-researchers-expose-breakthrough-u-spying-program-194217480--sector.html
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/one-nsa-most-precious-spying-tools-just-uncovered-115018517.html
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