Securelist:

Perhaps the most powerful tool in the Equation group’s arsenal is a mysterious module known only by a cryptic name: “nls_933w.dll”. It allows them to reprogram the hard drive firmware of over a dozen different hard drive brands, including Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Maxtor and IBM. This is an astonishing technical accomplishment and is testament to the group’s abilities.

Bruce Schneier:

The fascinating part of this story is that a computer was monitoring the Twitter feed and understood the obscure references, alerted a person who figured out who wrote them, researched what flight he was on, and sent an FBI team to the Syracuse airport within a couple of hours. There’s some serious surveillance going on.