A new set of documents purportedly lifted from the U.S. National Security Agency suggests that American spies have burrowed deep into the Middle East’s financial network, apparently compromising the Dubai office of the anti-money laundering and financial services firm EastNets.
TheShadowBrokers, which startled the security experts last year by releasing some of the NSA’s hacking tools, has resumed pouring secrets into the public domain, this time by publishing purported details of the NSA’s operations against banks across the Arab world. In a first for TheShadowBrokers, the data includes PowerPoint slides and purported target lists, suggesting that the group has access to a broader range of data than previously known.
“This is by far the most brutal dump,” said Comae Technologies founder Matt Suiche, who has closely followed the group’s disclosures and initially helped confirm its connection to the NSA last year. In a blog post , he said it appeared that thousands of employee accounts and machines from the EastNets’ offices had been compromised and that financial institutions in Kuwait, Bahrain and the Palestinian territories had been targeted for espionage.
Calls and messages left with EastNets’ offices in Dubai, London and New York were either not picked up or not immediately returned.
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