Cybersecurity

THE LEAKED NSA SPY TOOL THAT HACKED THE WORLD

AN ELITE RUSSIAN hacking team, a historic ransomware attack, an espionage group in the Middle East, and countless small time cryptojackers all have one thing in common. Though their methods and objectives vary, they all lean on leaked NSA hacking tool EternalBlue to infiltrate target computers and spread malware across networks.

Leaked to the public not quite a year ago, EternalBlue has joined a long line of reliable hacker favorites. The ConfickerWindows worm infected millions of computers in 2008, and the Welchia remote code execution worm wreaked havoc 2003. EternalBlue is certainly continuing that tradition—and by all indications it's not going anywhere. If anything, security analysts only see use of the exploit diversifying as attackers develop new, clever applications, or simply discover how easy it is to deploy.