`Shadow Brokers' use stolen spyware to unleash dark deeds

The ransomware worm crippling tens of thousands of computers worldwide was unleashed by the “Shadow Brokers” — hackers who somehow got hold of NSA spyware reportedly designed to thwart ISIS or the North Koreans.

“It’s a sophisticated cyber weapon,” said computer security expert Chris Wysopal, co-founder of Veracode of Burlington. “The Shadow Brokers stole it ... and modified the code into ransomware.”

The Shadow Brokers have been dumping malware from the National Security Agency for about a year — and all for free. Yesterday’s nasty batch of malware was called Wanna Cry — and it hit Russia hard first, then England and beyond quickly after that.

“It’s just been building and building. If it gets inside an organization, it’s really bad with up to 80 percent of the computers infected,” said Wysopal. “We’ve had worms and viruses before, but never ransomware this bad.”

He said the NSA likely cooked up this batch of hacking code to take on ISIS or possibly North Korea in cyberspace.

Nobody seems to know exactly who the Shadow Brokers are and how they grabbed the data, but the denizens of the dark side of the web have dumped a gigabyte worth of the NSA weaponized software in the past eight months, according to The Intercept.

The online website is devoted to reporting on documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and warns this latest attack isn’t over yet.

A tweet last month from a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, who are known for their bad grammar, states: “the shadow brokers not run, the shadow brokers stay and fight.”

Microsoft Windows operating systems are being targeted in this latest hit by the group.

TechCrunch, an online tech site, reported last month the Shadow Brokers recently used hacked NSA code that could have been created to target the international flow of money.

The group — or hacker, because no one seems to know who is behind this disruption — first appeared in summer 2016, according to multiple reports. Some of their targets, besides Microsoft, include retail sales and anti-virus software.

The group has even taken on President Trump, in an odd message that read, in part: “The Shadow Brokers is losing faith in you.” They end by asking for donations.