by Bill Gertz
The National Security Agency should not be restricted from using software holes in overseas spying following disclosure Tuesday that Russian hackers conducted a major cyber espionage campaign using a flaw in Microsoft Windows, a former NSA official says.
The security firm iSight Partners, in cooperation with Microsoft, revealed Tuesday that sophisticated Russian hackers working for the Moscow government conducted the cyber spying campaign against NATO, a U.S. government agency and European countries using a previously unknown “zero day” flaw in the widely-used operating system.
The company called the Russian hacker group behind the cyber spying the “Sandworm Team” that has been active since 2009. The group’s use of the Windows flaw was detected last month, the company said in a statement on the flaw.
“We are actively monitoring multiple intrusion teams with differing missions, targets and attack capabilities,” the statement said. “We are tracking active campaigns by at least five distinct intrusions teams.”
