Foreign hackers responsible for the theft of top secret cyber weapons from the National Security Agency are ranting that no one is interested in buying the stolen cyber tools.
A group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, which claimed responsibility in mid-August for penetrating the NSA and seizing prized malware, said in a profane Borat-like posting over the weekend that it has found “no interest” for its online auction of the pilfered cyber weapons.
The group originally released some teaser cyber tools for free, and analysts confirmed that they appeared to be state-of-the-art malware from the NSA’s secret hacking division.
“TheShadowBrokers is realizing peoples is not thinking auction is being real?” the hackers said in the message, in broken English, adding that the online auction for the stolen tools “is sounding crazy but is being real.”
The hackers initially demanded one million Bitcoin for the stolen malware, a pile of crypto currency worth about $611 million today. In their latest message, the group acknowledged that that price was “a ridiculous sum” and indicated it would accept far less.
The stolen malware allows perpetrators to break through security firewalls and lurk unseen, monitoring network traffic or launching a devastating cyber attack.
The Shadow Brokers’ message is vulgar and hard to read, sounding as if it is written by angry poor speakers of English. Whether it is all show is not clear as the identity of the hackers is unknown.
Tim Johnson: 202-383-6028, @timjohnson4