How Chinese Spies Got the N.S.A’s Hacking Tools, and Used Them for Attacks

Chinese actors captured code from attacks levied against them by the US government and used these vulnerabilities for their own benefit. Specifically, the Chinese hackers were able to acquire high value NSA tools and various hackers later used them to attack high value targets, including the British health care system and the shipping company Maersk. The group of Chinese hackers, also known as the “Shadow Brokers”, released the NSA’s hacking tools on the Internet, which allowed Russian and North Korean hackers to use them for their own purposes. There is one of the first known cases where an adversary of the United States has retrieved the very exploits used against them and used them for their own purposes. The NSA and the US government will have to make more complicated decisions in the future about whether to use their attacks and vulnerabilities or to save them for later use.