A hacking group called Shadow Brokers has claimed in an online announcement that it has a set of hacking tools that appear to belong to a national security agency, specifically the Equation Group, which is likely a subsidiary of the NSA, and are available for sale.
In an attempt to back up their claim, the group has released what appears to be a sample of the attack code.
The Shadow Brokers are willing to sell the full set of tools to the highest bidder. They aim to take 1,000,000 bitcoins, worth about 568 million dollars.
Some may doubt that the group has access to the tools, but many say this is something that should be taken seriously.
The CEO of the security company and former NSA researcher, Dave Aitel, said:
It is at the very least very interesting and at the very most, extremely harmful. It will destroy some functions, if they are not already destroyed.
In a series of tweets, the CTO of the security company CrowdStrike, Dmitri Alperovitch, said that the recent leak will further jeopardize the US election.
The files, which were released over the weekend, appear to be from files dating back to 2013, the period when the Edward Snowden revelations were made.
This latest cyber security threat concerning US national secrets comes amid the recent disclosure of email messages and documents belonging to the Democratic Party.
