arstechnica | A long list of almost superhuman technical feats illustrate Equation Group's extraordinary skill, painstaking work, and unlimited resources. They include:
- The use of virtual file systems, a feature also found in the highly sophisticated Regin malware. Recently published documents provided by Ed Snowden indicate that the NSA used Regin to infect the partly state-owned Belgian firm Belgacom.
- The stashing of malicious files in multiple branches of an infected computer's registry. By encrypting all malicious files and storing them in multiple branches of a computer's Windows registry, the infection was impossible to detect using antivirus software.
- Redirects that sent iPhone users to unique exploit Web pages. In addition, infected machines reporting to Equation Group command servers identified themselves as Macs, an indication that the group successfully compromised both iOS and OS X devices.
- The use of more than 300 Internet domains and 100 servers to host a sprawling command and control infrastructure.
- USB stick-based reconnaissance malware to map air-gapped networks, which are so sensitive that they aren't connected to the Internet. Both Stuxnet and the related Flame malware platform also had the ability to bridge airgaps.
- An unusual if not truly novel way of bypassing code-signing restrictions in modern versions of Windows, which require that all third-party software interfacing with the operating system kernel be digitally signed by a recognized certificate authority. To circumvent this restriction, Equation Group malware exploited a known vulnerability in an already signed driver for CloneCD to achieve kernel-level code execution.
Taken together, the accomplishments led Kaspersky researchers to
conclude that Equation Group is probably the most sophisticated computer
attack group in the world, with technical skill and resources that
rival the groups that developed Stuxnet and the Flame espionage malware.
"It seems to me Equation Group are the ones with the coolest toys,"
Costin Raiu, director of Kaspersky Lab's global research and analysis
team, told Ars. "Every now and then they share them with the Stuxnet
group and the Flame group, but they are originally available only to the
Equation Group people. Equation Group are definitely the masters, and
they are giving the others, maybe, bread crumbs. From time to time they
are giving them some goodies to integrate into Stuxnet and Flame."
In an exhaustive report published Monday at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit here, researchers stopped short of saying Equation Group was the handiwork of the NSA—but they provided detailed evidence that strongly implicates the US spy agency.
