By Madison Ruppert: A recently released contract reveals that the National Security Agency
(NSA) paid a French hacking company an unknown amount of money in 2012
for a 12-month subscription to a “binary analysis and exploits service.”
The contract, released under a Freedom of Information Act request, shows firm proof of the massive malware purchasing program run by the United States.
While it was most recently revealed that the FBI employs hackers, this is the first time that a document has been publicly released that clearly shows the NSA’s exploit purchasing program.
The contract, released by MuckRock, shows that the NSA paid a redacted sum to Vupen, a company based in Montpelier, France, for a year’s worth of exploits.
The exploits purchased are sometimes called “zero-day attacks” due to the fact that they remain undetected and unpatched by software developers.
They are “complex codes custom-written by hackers to target undisclosed security weaknesses in widely used operating systems like Windows and software programs like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Java, and Flash,”
The contract, released under a Freedom of Information Act request, shows firm proof of the massive malware purchasing program run by the United States.
While it was most recently revealed that the FBI employs hackers, this is the first time that a document has been publicly released that clearly shows the NSA’s exploit purchasing program.
The contract, released by MuckRock, shows that the NSA paid a redacted sum to Vupen, a company based in Montpelier, France, for a year’s worth of exploits.
The exploits purchased are sometimes called “zero-day attacks” due to the fact that they remain undetected and unpatched by software developers.
They are “complex codes custom-written by hackers to target undisclosed security weaknesses in widely used operating systems like Windows and software programs like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Java, and Flash,”




