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Security researchers recently unearthed a spying tool that managed to go undetected for the past seven years. Dubbed “The Mask” by those at Kaspersky Lab, the malware zeroed in on a wide range of high-profile targets for the better part of a decade using techniques and code more sophisticated than anything previously found in the wild. Experts at Kaspersky say the malware specifically went after government agencies, diplomatic offices and embassies, research organizations and activists as well as those in the gas, oil and energy markets. It employed a combination of malware, rootkit methods and even a bootkit to remain undetected over the years.
The OP article says something about the origin possibly being a Spanish speaking country.
Zcustosmorum
reply to post by andy06shake
Be a breath of fresh air to know that this wasn't the NSA, however if it was then business as usual then
At one time I would have thought that meant not the USA, but nowadays I'm not so sure:
Furthermore, the tool was designed to target files with extensions that Kaspersky isn’t familiar with. The firm said such files are likely part of custom government software and might have been used for encryption.
Experts believe the team that created The Mask are even more talented than those that were behind Flame, another sophisticated virus that most believe was designed to attack Iran’s nuclear program.
The security firm found nearly 400 victims across more than two dozen countries although most were located in Brazil and Morocco. As such, they believe the attacks may have been launched from a Spanish-speaking country.
Of course even if the NSA is the origin, the appearance of having an origin in a Spanish speaking country could be a diversionary tactic to draw attention/suspicion away from the NSA, so I wouldn't rule them out. But whichever country did it, it sounds like a state-sponsored spying effort, and not some teenager doing it for lulz.
Recently, the Latino population has grown to encompass more of the country making it the largest minority group in the U.S. Spanish is not a foreign language anymore; it's the second language of the United States.
The security firm found nearly 400 victims across more than two dozen countries although most were located in Brazil and Morocco. As such, they believe the attacks may have been launched from a Spanish-speaking country.
Mesay Mekonnen was at his desk, at a news service based in Northern Virginia, when gibberish suddenly exploded across his computer screen one day in December. A sophisticated cyberattack was underway.
But this wasn’t the Chinese army or the Russia mafia at work.
Instead, a nonprofit research lab has fingered government hackers in a much less technically advanced nation, Ethiopia, as the likely culprits, saying they apparently bought commercial spyware, essentially off the shelf. This burgeoning industry is making surveillance capabilities that once were the exclusive province of the most elite spy agencies, such as National Security Agency, widely available to governments worldwide.
Me thinks that this has the stamp of some alphabet agencies agenda all over it!
Good question. Either they know more than was reported in the story that led them to that conclusion, or else they don't know what languages are spoken in Brazil and Morocco. I would like to think the latter isn't true, but you never know.
adjensen
What do Brazil and Morocco have to do with that conclusion -- they speak Arabic in Morocco and Portuguese in Brazil.