Kaspersky antivirus9/21/2023 ![]() The new details are likely to continue to put pressure on US and Western European companies-which account for about 60 percent of Kaspersky Labs' sales-to further curtail business with the Russian antivirus provider. The NYT said the tip-off from Israeli spies led to an unprecedented decision last month that all Kaspersky software be removed from US government computers. The Kaspersky software, in turn, allowed Russian hackers to home in on the files. In addition, Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts.Īs the WSJ reported last week, the NSA worker breached agency rules by bringing home code and other classified material and storing them on an Internet-connected computer that had Kaspersky software running on it. Kaspersky Lab reiterates its willingness to work alongside US authorities to address any concerns they may have about its products as well as its systems, and respectfully requests any relevant, verifiable information that would enable the company to begin an investigation at the earliest opportunity. As the integrity of our products is fundamental to our business, Kaspersky Lab patches any vulnerabilities it identifies or that are reported to the company. ![]() Kaspersky Lab was not involved in, and does not possess any knowledge of, the situation in question. In a statement, Kaspersky Lab officials wrote: The tool is called "silent signatures"-strings of digital code that operate in stealth to find malware but which could also be written to search computers for potential classified documents, using keywords or acronyms. Over the past several years, the firm has, on occasion, used a standard industry technique that detects computer viruses but can also be employed to identify information and other data not related to malware, according to two industry officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. ![]() The WaPo article reporting the same events is here It adds additional details about the role Kaspersky AV reportedly played in identifying the NSA material the employee stored on his home computer. provided their NSA counterparts with solid evidence of the Kremlin campaign in the form of screenshots and other documentation, according to the people briefed on the events. Israeli intelligence officers informed the NSA that, in the course of their Kaspersky hack, they uncovered evidence that Russian government hackers were using Kaspersky's access to aggressively scan for American government classified programs and pulling any findings back to Russian intelligence systems. In its June 2015 report, Kaspersky noted that its attackers seemed primarily interested in the company's work on nation-state attacks, particularly Kaspersky’s work on the "Equation Group"-its private industry term for the NSA-and the "Regin" campaign, another industry term for a hacking unit inside the United Kingdom’s intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Investigators later discovered that the Israeli hackers had implanted multiple back doors into Kaspersky's systems, employing sophisticated tools to steal passwords, take screenshots, and vacuum up emails and documents. Kaspersky's researchers noted that attackers had managed to burrow deep into the company's computers and evade detection for months. The NYT likened to a "sort of Google search for sensitive information." The Israeli spies, in turn, reported their findings to their counterparts in the US.Īs reporters Nicole Perlroth and Scott Shane reported: More revealing still, the report said, that during the course of the hack, the spies watched in real time as Russian government hackers turned Kaspersky antivirus software used by 400 million people worldwide into an improvised search tool that scoured computers for code names of US intelligence programs. The NYT, citing unnamed people, said on Tuesday that Israeli spies indeed carried out the attack. ![]() At the time, Kaspersky Lab researchers said that the hackers appeared most interested in data the company had amassed on nation-sponsored hackers. When combined with other clues-including the attackers' targeting of entities located in the US, which is off limits to the NSA-most analysts concluded that the 2014 hack was carried out by Israel. Kaspersky released a detailed report that said some of the attack code shared digital fingerprints first found in the Stuxnet worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program. Further Reading Stepson of Stuxnet stalked Kaspersky for months, tapped Iran nuke talksMoscow-based Kaspersky Lab disclosed the intrusion into its network in mid-2015. ![]()
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