It would be really surprising if Kaspersky survived this.
Do you mean the company or the man?
The company. The man will be fine.
Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
31–40 of 298 posts
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#32Perhaps he/she had the data on a SAN while performing development from a more “secure” computer and one of his personal computers with AV installed was connected to the same SAN. A likely scenario as far as scenarios go.
One other possibility is that Kaspersky stole nothing, that it found the malware on computers it was tasked with protecting. And one should wonder did they add signatures to their A/V product to find and protect against this malware or not?
NYT:
Israeli intelligence officers informed the N.S.A. 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. They provided their N.S.A. counterparts with solid evidence of the Kremlin campaign in the form of screenshots and other documentation, according to the people briefed on the events.
As reported, this isn't incidental collection.
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#33Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#34Kaspersky has been known to collaborate with the Russian government and promote Russian interest. They've actively pursued state actors that are hostile to Russian interest, for example The Equation Group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group), which wouldn't be an organic part of the function or activities of a normal civilian cyber-security company. Such an "innocent" company would have no reason to get involved in cyberwarfare between state-actors, while Kaspersky is heavily involved in such activities and pouring considerable resources into them. This is especially damning since they are clearly targeting state-actors that are antagonistic to Russian interest, such as the US (Equation Group) and its allies (Israel), yet are totally silent on pro-Russian activity.
For anyone who's been at all aware of its history, it is clear that Kaspersky is at the very least actively collaborating with the Russian government, most likely doing its bidding, and possibly can be described as a cyber-security arm of Russian security forces.
I'm honestly surprised their products aren't already banned across all US government agencies.
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#35Note that Windows Defender also uploads files on scans which is opt out.
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#36It would be really surprising if Kaspersky survived this.
Good riddance.
What was so bad about Kaspersky that you consider it good riddance? I recall reading about legitimate good security work and breach investigations from them just a few years ago. It's not like anybody forced you to use their software.
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#37So, if I understand this right... some NSA TAO employee was doing work on their home computer (???), where they installed Kaspersky AV (reasonable), and Kaspersky promptly identified the malware they were working on as malware and uploaded it? And then Israel hacked Kaspersky 'cause that's what they do or something, found the NSA development malware, and was like "Hey NSA, you should figure out how this got here"? Th…
some NSA TAO employee was doing work on their home computer
Given that they haven't been charged, it's pretty likely there's more to this story.
Two possibilities:
It wasn't actually their home computer, but it was a non-classified system where code was being move for non-attributable active deployment.
The code was developed or acquired in a non-classified space first.
There are probably more possibilities too. There's some good speculation here: https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/10/06/the-conflicting-homewo...
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#38It seems very plausible that the FSB is using Kaspersky to alert them every time the software finds something of interest. It would then make further sense that the FSB would locate the target and investigate. It's probably how they found this NSA Employees PC. Entry to the device was probably rather simple since they already had some level of access through the Kaspersky product.
Quite brilliant to use a popular Anti Virus software to scan millions of computers for interesting software. The FSB probably couldn't believe its luck when they found this target. I am in disbelief that the US Government would even use Kaspersky in the first place. I am just a simple consumer and would never trust their software knowing how the Russian system operates. There is no such thing as independence from oversight.
Leave it to the Jews to figure all this out. Super smart, it's in their genetics.....Bravo...
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good riddance.
What was so bad about Kaspersky that you consider it good riddance? I recall reading about legitimate good security work and breach investigations from them just a few years ago. It's not like anybody forced you to use their software.
For whatever it's worth, my employer forced me to use their software. My 2015 MacBook Pro would regularly grind to a halt. We recently switched, hopefully for the better.
Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached
#40Is the Unit 8200 involved in this operation?
Given that 8200 is their unified SIGINT enterprise, yes.