Possibly around 1996, but more actively in 2001, the Equation Group has been doing some really hardcore hacking on targets throughout the world. Their methods are far up the supply chain, as they would intercept and infect CDs and other media prior to them being sold. Other media like hard drives and such. A report found exploits for hard drives made by many of the largest brands in the industry, including Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Toshiba, and Hitachi. Exploits that reprograms the device firmware and creates hidden partitions and making it’s host machine the ultimate espionage platform.
The group is closely tied to Stuxnet, using many overlapping vulnerabilities and techniques over the same time period, and those similarities combined with previously published NSA hard drive exploits have led many to believe that Equation may be part of the NSA.
Read the Kapersky report here.
