Now the NSA is in your hard drive, says Kaspersky

Recently, it seems that you can’t go two days without finding out some new piece of information which somehow relates to the NSA’s spying program, and with every day that passes it becomes more and more clear that the scope of the program, and the abuse of privacy which it involves are of an incredible magnitude and inescapable pervasiveness.


Now, in yet another part of the elaborate plot that is the illegal NSA spying program, Moscow based firm Kaspersky has uncovered software hidden deep within the firmware of computers’ hard drives’ that is designed to spy on the user. According to Kaspersky, this method of espionage would allow the ‘sophisticated threat actor’ (which Kaspersky calls the ‘Equation group’)  to spy on PC’s worldwide, and may have been going on for as long as 15 years (since around 2001.)

In its report, Kaspersky (the firm that was responsible for breaking the Stuxnet story), discovered that the ‘Equation group’ has the ability to hide spyware in hard drives of important manufacturers such as Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics.

According to information released to Reuters, the Russian firm found evidence of this spyware in the hard drives of 30 nations, but found that these were most prolific in the hard drives of countries such as Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.

Talking to Reuters about where the spyware was found to be most prolific, Kaspersky said,
‘The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists’

Although NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines refused to pass comment on the new revelations, a former NSA employee told Reuters that what Kaspersky had uncovered was indeed true, and that the NSA valued its ability to get spyware into sensitive locations as highly as it does viral spyware such as Stuxnet (a worm computer virus the NSA used to mount a cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear power plant.)

Peter Swire, (a member of the US Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology) said that these new revelations about how the NSA carries out its espionage could have a seriously negative impact on diplomatic relations and trade agreements, and urged Obama’s administration to think hard about how they sought to proceed with their spy programs in the future, lest they face serious international backlash and loss of faith.

According to lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu, putting spyware in the firmware of the hard drives is perfect for the NSA’s espionage efforts because,

‘The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over’
Although spokespeople from both Seagate and Micron have made statements denying that they know anything about foreign code appearing in the firmware of their hard drives, Vincent Liu, a partner at Bishop Fox and former NSA analyst, explains that if a company wants to sell a product to the Pentagon they are asked to cooperate with security auditing for those products by handing over the source code,

‘They don’t admit it, but they do say, “We’re going to do an evaluation, we need the source code,”  It’s usually the NSA doing the evaluation, and it’s a pretty small leap to say they’re going to keep that source code.’

Although the link to the NSA is currently only circumstantial, according to Kaspersky’s report, the Equation group’s obvious links to Flame and Stuxnet make it almost inevitable that these hacks and spyware installations are coming from a position of wealth and authority that is unlikely to be anything but a large and well organized intelligence agency. In the report Kaspersky lays it out like this,

‘There are solid links indicating that the Equation group has interacted with other powerful groups, such as the Stuxnet and Flame operators–generally from a position of superiority. The Equation group had access to zero-days before they were used by Stuxnet and Flame, and at some point they shared exploits with others.’
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Icy blast hits South as winter spreads its reach

Salt trucks rumbled and traffic jammed as a massive new storm brought snow, freezing rain, ice and frigid temperatures to a large swath of the United States on Monday.

"It's dangerously cold," Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser told CNN's "The Situation Room," warning that the nation's capital was bracing for up to 8 inches of snow. And federal government offices in the area will be closed on Tuesday.

But the snow isn't the only thing to worry about.

"We are going to see high snowfall amounts, but the ice is what is going to be the big story," CNN meteorologist Jennifer Gray said, pointing at North Carolina.

Raleigh, North Carolina, could see up to a half-inch of ice, which could knock out power and "makes travel nearly impossible," she said.

The bitter cold is coming from several fronts. This weekend, the Northeast weathered its fourth snowstorm in three weeks, and extremely low temperatures are predicted to hang around for two more weeks.

A winter storm stretching across the Midwest and Southeast is bringing freezing rain and ice accumulation, especially from Arkansas to Tennessee.

Late Monday, Tennessee declared a state of emergency as road conditions quickly deteriorated and power outages spiked.

Temperatures across the eastern half of the United States will be below average for the entire week, and that's a big deal as winter fatigue sets in.

In Boston, where 95 inches of snow have already been recorded this year, the latest storm was expected to skirt by and bring a few more inches, Gray said.

This February is the city's snowiest month ever.

Frank Ippolito, the owner of a snow removal business operating in Boston, said his staff was weary from lack of sleep.

At this point, his snowplow drivers are putting snow "anywhere and everywhere there's an open piece of land that won't obstruct the view safely of the driver or prevent someone from getting out of a doorway or moving a car," he said.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said one man died after suffering a heart attack while shoveling snow.

"Please stay close to your home today -- shovel in short stints," he said.

Mounting "snow rage" is pitting drivers and neighbors against each other as the winter weather shows no sign of letting up, CNN affiliate WFXT reported.

"We've been noticing a little frustration out there on the roads," Massachusetts State Police trooper Kathryn Downey said. "I think people are getting pushed to their limits."

Margo Souza of Charlestown, Massachusetts, told CNN's iReport she was trying to take the snow in stride, even though it has doubled her commute. Her golden retrievers, Logan and Copley, love to bound around in it.

Margo Souza and her pup, Logan, overlooked the Boston Harbor Monday morning. The snow is taller than Logan and the top layer of the bay is frozen.  

Still, she said she was hoping her city's baseball team might bring something with them when they head south for spring training.

"Send the snow to Florida," she said, "along with the Red Sox equipment."

One New York resident, Max Guliani, posted photos on Twitter of the frozen fountain at Bryant Park in New York City.

A pipe burst at the city's iconic Empire State Building, forcing one of its observatories to shut down, a spokeswoman said.

In Ithaca, in upstate New York, temperatures have gotten so cold that even the city's tourism website is telling people to head to the Sunshine State.

"That's it. We surrender," the website says. "Winter, you win. Key West anyone?"

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