This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth

It took a team of some of the NSA’s best analysts to develop the algorithm that ensured that EternalBlue would land on the target’s computer without crashing screens on the other end. And once they figured it out, TAO marveled at the magic of their polished espionage tool. “It netted some of the very best counterterrorism intelligence we got,” one former TAO hacker told me. One of EternalBlue’s best attributes was that it wasn’t “dirty”—it left minimal logging behind. It allowed the agency’s hackers to move from server to server undetected. The chance that the NSA’s targets—terrorists, Russia, China, North Korea—would ever discover they’d been had with the agency’s exploit was virtually null. The agency used EternalBlue for espionage. But they knew if the exploit ever got out, it could just as easily function as an intercontinental missile. If hackers in Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, or God knows where else swapped out the payload for one that could sabotage data or shut down systems on the other side, it could wreak total havoc.