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How "Omnipotent" Hackers Tied To NSA Hid For 14 Years and Were Found At Last
Advocatus Diaboli writes The money and time required to develop the Equation Group malware, the technological breakthroughs the operation accomplished, and the interdictions performed against targets leave little doubt that the operation was sponsored by a nation-state with nearly unlimited resources to dedicate to the project. The countries that were and weren't targeted, the ties to Stuxnet and Flame, and the Grok artifact found inside the Equation Group keylogger strongly support the theory the NSA or a related US agency is the responsible party, but so far Kaspersky has declined to name a culprit. NSA officials didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment for this story. What is safe to say is that the unearthing of the Equation Group is a seminal finding in the fields of computer and national security, as important, or possibly more so, than the revelations about Stuxnet.
Ya.. another related post from engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/16/hard-drive-spyware/). "It's been known for a while that the NSA will intercept and bug equipment to spy on its soon-to-be owners, but the intellgency agency's techniques are apparently more clever than first thought. Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered apparently state-created spyware buried in the firmware of hard drives from big names like Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. When present, the code lets snoops collect data and map networks that would otherwise be inaccessible -- all they need to retrieve info is for an unwitting user to insert infected storage (such as a CD or USB drive) into an internet-connected PC. The malware also isn't sitting in regular storage, so you can't easily get rid of it or even detect it."
RTFA. They point out that they don't have an example of actual Mac infections (they only have two for Windows over the last 15 years), but that they get regular communication from infected machines identifying as Mac OS. Kaspersky makes it clear that they believe Macs are also compromised as a result. Nothing is mentioned about Linux, but I'd be surprised if they don't have access there as well.