WASHINGTON — Analysis of the cyberweapons that hackers say they extracted from the top secret National Security Agency has left a key team of outside experts increasingly certain the files came from the NSA.
The Russia-based Kaspersky Lab, which has been at the forefront into research of NSA techniques, said it found 347 instances of encryption algorithms in the leaked files that have been seen previously only in NSA-linked computer programming.
A successful hack of the NSA — if that’s what happened — would mark a major defeat for one of the crown jewels of the U.S. government’s defense establishment. The NSA’s hacking unit has been credited with sophisticated cyberweapons, including the code that is credited with crippling the Iranian nuclear program.