The Shadow Brokers, a group that leaked many of the NSA's hacking tools, has once again released a new tool used by NSA agents, but only to subscribers to its "monthly dumps."
The new tool is called UNITEDRAKE, and it is a “fully scalable remote data collection system” that comes with a series of “plugins,” allowing attackers to gain complete control of targeted Windows computers.
In its latest post, the team announced some changes to the monthly leaks service.
Notably, the September tool leak also includes an unencrypted PDF, which is a user manual for UNITEDRAKE (United Rake), an exploit developed by the NSA.
According to the leaked user manual, UNITEDRAKE is a custom modular malware that has the ability to collect data from the camera and microphone, from the keyboard, and gain access to external drives and other external devices in order to spy on its targets.
The malicious application can get plug-ins that allow its capabilities to be expanded.
We first heard about the UNITEDRAKE tool in 2014 from classified NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden
Snowden's documents state that the US intelligence agency used the tool along with other tools such as: CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE, GUMFISH, FOGGYBOTTOM, GROK and SALVAGERABBIT, to infect millions of computers around the world.
CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE is for recording conversations through the microphone of the infected computer
GUMFISH is intended to secretly gain control of the computer's camera and take pictures
FOGGYBOTTOM for obtaining Internet data such as browsing history, login details and passwords
GROK is a Trojan Keylogger for recording keystrokes.
SALVAGERABBIT is for accessing data on removable flash drives connected to the infected computer.
The Shadow Brokers say they are now only accepting payments in ZCash (ZEC) from their monthly subscribers, not Monero. The group is demanding nearly $4 million to hand over their entire NSA arsenal.
The group demanded 100 ZEC when it launched its first monthly tool leak in June, but now the hackers are reportedly demanding 16,000 ZEC (total value $3,914,080) for all of the NSA tools. Zcash is currently trading at $248 per unit.
Those who want to gain access to only the malicious tools released in September will have to pay 500 ZEC.
