The Pangu Lab report had a look under the bonnet of malware that its researchers first encountered in 2013 during an investigation into a hack against "a key domestic department."

At the time, the researchers couldn't figure out who was behind the hack, but then, thanks to leaked NSA data about the hacking group Equation Group -- widely believed to be the NSA -- released by the mysterious group Shadow Brokers and by the German magazine Der Spiegel, they connected the dots and realised it was made by the NSA.

"The Equation Group is the world's leading cyber-attack group and is generally believed to be affiliated with the National Security Agency of the United States. Judging from the attack tools related to the organisation, including Bvp47, Equation group is indeed a first-class hacking group," the report said.

It said that the Bvp47 hacker tool was well-designed, powerful, and widely adopted.

“Its network attack capability equipped by 0day vulnerabilities was unstoppable, and its data acquisition under covert control was with little effort. The Equation Group is in a dominant position in national-level cyberspace confrontation," the report said.