Cybersecurity

News that a hacking group within or associated with the National Security Agency compromised the firmware of hard drive controllers from a number of manufacturers as part of a 14-year cyber-espionage campaign has led some to believe that the manufacturers were somehow complicit in the hacking—either by providing source code to controller firmware or other technical support. But it's long been established that hard drive controllers can be relatively easily reverse-engineered without any help from manufacturers—at least, without intentional help.

How hackers could attack hard drives to create a pervasive backdoor