The Shadow Brokers
Aliases: The ShadowBrokers, TSB, Shadow Brokers, ShadowBrokers
- First seen
- 2016-07-01 00:00:00
- Primary motivation
- espionage
- Sophistication
- expert
- Resource level
- government
- Actor type
- nation-state
- Profile updated
- 2026-07-07 11:55:48
Targeted industries: government-and-public-sector technology-and-telecommunications financial-services
Context
The Shadow Brokers (TSB) is a hacker group who first appeared in the summer of 2016. They published several leaks containing hacking tools from the National Security Agency (NSA, including several zero-day exploits.[1] Specifically, these exploits and vulnerabilities targeted enterprise firewalls, antivirus software, and Microsoft products. The Shadow Brokers originally attributed the leaks to the Equation Group threat actor, who have been tied to the NSA's Tailored Access Operations unit.
Reports & references
- Wikipedia — The Shadow Brokers (report)
- Kaspersky — 88199 (report)
- musalbas.com — Equation Group Firewall Operations Catalogue (report)
- vice.com — Shadow Brokers Whine That Nobody Is Buying Their Hacked Nsa Files (report)
- scmagazineuk.com — 1476023 (report)
- cyberscoop.com — Nsa Shadow Brokers Leaks Iran Russia Optimusprime Stoicsurgeon (report)
- csoonline.com — New Nsa Leak May Expose Its Bank Spying Windows Exploits (report)
- threatpost.com — 124882 (report)
- securityaffairs.co — Shadowbrokers Return (report)
- hackread.com — Nsa Data Dump Shadowbrokers Expose Unitedrake Malware (report)
- blacklakesecurity.com — Who Was The Nsa Contractor Arrested For Leaking The Shadow Brokers Hacking Tools (report)