From Yahoo/Reuters:
Russian researchers expose breakthrough in U.S. spying program
The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.
That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.
Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said. (http://reut.rs/1L5knm0)
More at the site - I had heard about this for a few months but it had not hit the mainstream media so I did not post about it. A bit more:
A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the spy agency valued these espionage programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.
Heh - the good old NSA (No Such Agency) up to its tricks. I support them in their efforts - I would love to be a fly on the wall at their briefing sessions. I just wish that we had a Commander in Chief with enough balls to use this information and with the moral clarity to pass it over to our other allies in the area - Israel, Jordan, Egypt, etc...
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