A group called Shadow Brokers leaked a set of hacking tools in 2017, leading to massive breaches security around the world, including ransomware WannaCry attacks.
The team he claimed to have stolen the tools by the US National Security Service (NSA), but it was a mystery in exactly what way were found in their hands. Now one Symantec's report revealed that the source might have been Chinese agents who took the tools while the NSA attacked their computers.
Symantec found that the Buckeye group (code name for a Guangzhou-based contractor working for China's Ministry of State Security) used the stolen NSA tools at least a year before the Shadow Brokers leak. Symantec believes that the Buckeye group obtained the tools during an NSA attack and then used them to make their own version.
And logically it is easy for the Buckeye group to manage to apbreak the tools, since according to one an article by The New York Times, the NSA regards the group as one of the most dangerous. The Buckeye group was tasked with attacking US space technology manufacturers and satellite manufacturers and nuclear proliferation.
If the source of the Shadow Broker was Buckeye, then this group was also indirectly responsible for the attacks by the North Koreans and the Russian hackers who used the reformed tools to attack. The North Koreans struck the UK National Health Service and influenced vaccine supplies and Russian hackers have suppressed critical Ukrainian services, including the postal system, airports and ATMs.
Eric Chien, a Symantec security advisor, told The New York Times that it is now time for America to seriously consider the possibility that its enemies can record and reform America's hacking tools when they are attacking. In short, America's enemies can use these tools, paid by US taxpayers, to attack US networks and infrastructures.
However, Symantec found no evidence that the Buckeye team used the NSA's tools against the NSA. THE company he thinks the group logically thought the NSA would already have developed defenses against its own weapons.
