Last Year, When of Snowden Revelations against NSA were on peak, Der Spiegel published a 48-page catalog of tools used by NSA to spy on people which was created in 2008 and was being used till 2013, don’t know if they are still using :)
Now, hackers group making their own hacking gadgets with the help of that 48-page-catalog and open source hardware.
The group named the project ‘NSA Playset,’ which helps other hackers and makers to build the spying tools like NSA and make use of those tools to protect against Spying.
According to the Mashable, they were able to connect to a Hacker named “Michael Ossmann” who is working inside this group, he said:
“To someone who is not an expert in the field, the capabilities in the catalog might seem far-fetched or ultra high-tech,” one of the hackers who’s part of the project.
“What we want to show is that these capabilities are very much achievable and practical. And by pointing out how easy they are to achieve, we hope that we can raise awareness of security threats in our computer system.”
Got the Idea:
This Idea came into the mind through security researcher Dean Pierce, who wanted to see how easy it would be to make the devices with Ossman and others joining the initiative shortly after.
Hackers said that it is not hard to reproduce the NSA Tools.
Retro Reflector:
Right now, Ossmann is working on a project named ‘Retro Reflector,’ An implant that when it attached to the computer’s VGA cable, transmit data about what is being displayed on the screen and send it over-the-air to a near by location.
Let’s read the Introduction of the website:
Welcome to the home of the NSA Playset.
In the coming months and beyond, we will release a series of dead simple, easy to use tools to enable the next generation of security researchers.
We, the security community have learned a lot in the past couple decades, yet the general public is still ill equipped to deal with real threats that face them every day, and ill informed as to what is possible.
Inspired by the NSA ANT catalog, we hope the NSA Playset will make cutting edge security tools more accessible, easier to understand, and harder to forget.
Four NSA Playset projects will be presented at this year’s premiere American hacking conference, DEF CON 22.
Source: Mashable | Der Spiegel | Wikipedia | NSA Playset | ZDNet
