NSA may have been hacked, hackers are asking for $568 million in Bitcoin to auction important documents

It seems the NSA has been hacked!

According to foreign media reports, the "Equation Group" working for the US National Security Agency (NSA) was recently attacked by hackers, and a hacker group calling itself "The Shadow Brokers" claimed responsibility for the incident.

Some cybersecurity experts who study leaked data, vulnerabilities and hacker tools believe that the attack is very likely to be real.

Not only that, the hackers who call themselves "Shadow Brokers" also demanded 1 million Bitcoins (about $568 million) to release the "best" cyber attack weapons and more files.

According to a 2015 report by security firm Kaspersky, the NSA's Equation Group was described as "exceeding any known group in terms of technical sophistication and having been active for nearly two decades".

The Equation Group has also been linked to the previously infamous Regin and Stuxnet worms, which were allegedly hacker attacks launched by the United States, although this has not been absolutely proven.

Two days ago, the Shadow Brokers posted some documents on Github (deleted) and Tumblr (deleted) that they said were from the Equation Group.

Most of the files contained installation scripts, command-and-control server configurations, and exploits purportedly targeting U.S. router and firewall manufacturers, including Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet.

According to the leaked documents, Chinese company Topsec was also a target of the Equation Group.

The leaked documents mention some of the file names mentioned by Edward Snowden, such as "BANANAGLEE" and "EPICBANANA."

"We are tracking the Equation Group," the Shadow Brokers said. "We cracked the Equation Group and found many of the Equation Group's cyber attack weapons. Look at these pictures. We will give you some Equation Group documents for free. Look, this is a good proof, isn't it? You enjoyed it!!! You broke the rules and you wrote down a lot of things. However, this is not all. We will auction the best documents."

It has not yet been confirmed whether the leaked documents are authentic, but some security experts believe that it is very likely.

“We haven’t tested these exploits, but they certainly look like valid exploits,” Matt Suiche, founder of UAE-based cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies, told the Daily Dot.

While some say the leaked documents could be a very elaborate scam, the so-called Bitcoin auction is just a distraction to attract media attention.

"If this is a scam, it must have taken a lot of work on the part of the perpetrators," security researcher The Grugq told Motherboard. "But the documentation looks pretty convincing."

If the NSA has been successfully hacked, then this hacking incident will be a very critical cybersecurity incident.