WASHINGTON – US National Security Agency’s most powerful cyber weapon hasreportedly fallen into enemy hands and is being used against Americancities with “alarming frequency” by the very foreign hackers it wasdesigned to counter.
In a Saturday report, the US-based *New York Times* daily explained how theNSA’s Tailored Access Operations lost control of its so-called‘EternalBlue’ malware tool to a cadre of hackers, referred to as the ShadowBrokers, which subsequently publicized the agency’s software exploits onthe internet and passed them on to hackers allegedly linked with Russia,China, and North Korea.
The report pointed out that the Shadow Brokers’ disclosure came thanks to a54-year-old former NSA contractor Harold Martin III, who pleaded guilty inMarch 2019 for, among other things, taking classified documents andelectronic devices home with him for more than 20 years in what governmentauthorities described as the biggest leak of classified data in US history.
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The report came amid an ongoing cyber attack on the city of Baltimore,which is paralyzing its critical infrastructure and halting daily importanttransactions from home sales to utility payments.
