As they say in the article, they hardly ever have to bother paying for exploits.
Perhaps to crack into the Iranian centrifuges, but for most Windows networks it's just poking around a little to find the guy with the compromized "smart" phone that logs into the corporate network, or the unauthorized addition of an "Internet of Things" device like a "smart" videocam or a WAP or the laptop the sales guys take home and let their kids play with. People share a link from their Google Drive or Dropbox on a public list. Or that FTP server marketing set up to update their WordPress site.
It amazes me that sysadmins don't read their logs. They're right there: the 836 password attempts from Romania; the hundreds of http-404 errors looking for weak software all coming from the same Chinese ISP. I have (no rocket science) automated intrusion detection systems that block this stuff, logs emailed daily, alarms set on various server parameters.
Spycraft involves stealing things and breaking into places people don't want you to. Mostly it's not that hard. With computer nets, you rarely even have to get your hands dirty. A little social engineering can get a lot of the way there. There was a remarkable post last week on stealing a person's identity via Amazon... https://medium.com/@espringe/amazon-s-customer-service-backdoor-be375b3428c4...
On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 5:03 PM, Ken Dibble krdibble@stny.rr.com wrote:
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/nsa-hacker-chief-explains-how-to-keep-him-out-o...
"How the NSA Gets You", eh?
How the NSA gets you is by buying zero-day exploits on the black market for tens of thousands of dollars apiece, and stockpiling them, and refusing to inform the software vendors about them so they can be patched, as any ethical IT security professional would do.
Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org
[excessive quoting removed by server]