White House: Blame cyberattack on hackers, not spy agencies
President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser has a message to those blaming U.S. intelligence agencies for the cyberattack encircling the globe: Don’t point a finger at the National Security Agency. Blame the hackers.
Since Friday, malware has infected an estimated 300,000 computers in 150 countries. Users’ files at hospitals, companies and government agencies have been held for ransom.
Cybersecurity experts say the unknown hackers used a hole in Microsoft software that was discovered by the National Security Agency. The hole was exposed when NSA documents were leaked online.
Brad Smith, general counsel and executive vice-president of Microsoft, laid some of the blame with the U.S. government, criticizing U.S. intelligence agencies for “stockpiling’’ software code that can be used by hackers.
“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability, stolen from the NSA, has affected customers around the world,’’ he said.
Tom Bossert, Trump’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, defended the NSA, the lead U.S. signals intelligence agency.
“This was not a tool developed by the NSA to hold ransom data,’’ Bossert told reporters Monday. “This was a tool developed by culpable parties — potentially criminals or foreign nationstates.’’
Perpetrators put the malware together in a way to deliver it with phishing emails, put it into embedded documents and caused infection, encryption and locking, he said. Cyber experts are telling government officials that the malware was built with parts and codes cobbled together from different places, a U.S. official said. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Cyber experts say the tools were stolen from the Equation Group, a powerful squad of hackers which some have ties to the NSA.
The tools materialized as part of an internet electronic auction set up by a group calling itself “Shadow Brokers.”