“Who is the real criminal?” Hrafnsson asked, during a live interview with RT. “We have been led to believe that the real danger of cyber warfare is from China or North Korea. But I think the real danger here is the US, the superpower. And they can cause real havoc all over the world with their technologies.”
READ MORE: ‘Equation Group’ hackers attacked 30+ nations with NSA-style tech
On Monday, Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky Labs revealed a trove of evidence showing that sophisticated surveillance systems had been embedded in thousands of computers belonging to officials, scientists, businessmen and journalists in states such as Russia, Iran and China starting from 2001, by what it called the Equation Group.
One of the most powerful in a suite of tools used by the team was a virus that attached itself to the in-built programming contained on the hard disk of almost every top manufacturer. The malware allowed the hackers to take over the computer before the operating system even loaded up for the first time, and has likely existed at least since 2007.
“We are not surprised. We should not be taken aback by anything after what we have learned from Edward Snowden, but we are surprised by the sophistication,” said the Icelandic journalist, who has worked with Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks since 2010.
“To go to the core of the computer, which makes it almost impossible to detect is something that we haven’t seen before.”
Hrafnsson says the National Security Agency is likely behind the operation, saying “there is no other agent that has the ability and the resources to do this.”
The NSA hasn’t admitted sponsoring the Equation Group – which appears to be lavishly resourced – but circumstantial evidence points to US involvement. Most of the computers infected are located in countries that enjoy a rocky relationship with Washington, while some of the infiltration techniques bear the hallmarks of other operations where the US has been ostensibly involved, such as the Stuxnet virus. Two anonymous sources, formerly with the NSA, also confirmed the existence of the espionage capabilities described by Kaspersky to Reuters.
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