Massive Cyber-Spying Program 'The Equation Group' Discovered - Mashable

Mashable, By Stan Schroeder

An incredibly sophisticated cyber espionage operation, likely originating in the U.S., has been discovered by the security researchers at Russia's Kaspersky Lab.

Dubbed the Equation Group, this "threat actor" has been using spyware and malware tools to infect computers of governments, telecoms, military, nuclear research, energy and other companies in more than 30 countries. Kaspersky did not say who's behind Equation, but its findings, presented during a security conference in Cancun, Mexico on Monday, indicate the group's malware is closely tied to Stuxnet, a virus developed by the U.S. and Israel, used to infect Iran's nuclear plants (it ended up infecting Russia's plant as well).

The Equation's level of sophistication and the scale of its operation makes Stuxnet seem like child play, according to Kaspersky's report.

Equation has been active perhaps as early as 1996, but it boosted its operations in 2008, developing several incredibly powerful cyberweapons. Kaspersky named these tools Equationdrug, Doublefantasy, Triplefantasy, Grayfish, Fanny and Equationlaser. Together, this malware suite was able to infect Windows computers, USB sticks and even hard drive firmware, letting Equation steal data from targeted computers and stay undetected for years. Read more.