Newly released documents from former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden confirm what many experts had already believed: The 234-megabyte archive of NSA hacker tools, exploits, and implants that leaked online earlier this week is real.
The key to confirming the leaked files, which was uploaded to various file-sharing sites earlier this week by a group called the “Shadow Brokers,” came in a top-secret agency manual published on Friday by Sam Biddle of The Intercept. It instructed NSA hackers on how to track their malicious software by using a 16-character string buried in the code.
The tracking string in the manual, ace02468bdf13579, also appears inside code for a software implant called “Second Date,” which was leaked as part of the archive posted earlier this week.
But that’s not the only piece of evidence that shows the leak was, in essence, a software “toolbox” for NSA hackers to target adversaries. Among other files in the archive are implants code-named Banana Glee, Jet Plow, and Zesty Leak, which were all documented in a top-secret 50-page catalog of NSA tools that was published in late 2013. – READ MORE
