A hacker or hackers going by the name of “The Shadow Brokers” is claiming to have hacked a group linked to the National Security Agency (NSA) and are offering their tools for sale on the dark web.

The Shadow Brokers claim to have hacked the Equation Group, a hacking group believed to be linked to the NSA given they primarily target countries regarded to be enemies of the United States, and that they had stolen advanced hacking tools including installation scripts, configurations for command and control servers, and exploits targeted to specific routers and firewalls.

“!!! Attention government sponsors of cyber warfare and those who profit from it !!!!” the group wrote in a post published Pastebin. “How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? Not malware you find in networks. Both sides, RAT + LP, full state sponsor tool set? We find cyber weapons made by creators of stuxnet, duqu, flame.”

“Kaspersky calls Equation Group. We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files,” the post went on.

The reference to Kaspersky relates to a report written by the security firm in 2015 that labeled the Equation Group as the most advanced hacking group they had ever seen, laying out evidence pointing to links to the NSA, including codenames used by the Equation Group that are found in top secret documents released by Edward Snowden.

It’s not clear at this stage whether the claims made by The Shadow Brokers are legit or not, with the group posting a list of file names that may or may not be evidence of sophisticated hacking tools.

The group is offering the tools for auction, but has said that if they receive 1 million bitcoin ($568 million) they will release the tools to everyone for free.

NSA hacked?

Given that it has never been officially confirmed that the NSA is linked to the Equation Group it’s difficult to ascertain whether the NSA itself has been hacked, but there is the chance they could have been.

“If this is a hoax, the perpetrators put a huge amount of effort in,” a security researcher told Motherboard. “The proof files look pretty legit, and they are exactly the sorts of exploits you would expect a group that targets communications infrastructure to deploy and use.”

If the hack is legit and tools included in the sale are real it’s unlikely that we’ll never know for sure, as it’s highly unlikely the secretive NSA will so much as comment on the hack, let alone confirm or deny it.

Image credit: electronicfrontierfoundation/Flickr/CC by 2.0