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Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#101

Post by dotancohen »

harry8 wrote: post #59

Israel (Mossad?) can hack something in Russia, see tools and recognise those tools as top secret NSA gear. Do you wonder how they made that recognition? Were they shared with Israel so they knew, in which case the source could have been Israel being hacked, right? Or they knew because hacking the NSA is something multiple nation states have done. I'd be completely amazed if the NSA wasn't absolutely full of spies act…

I can look at a Git commit and tell you exactly which of my coworkers wrote it without looking at %cn. Code has style, like spoken language has accents.

One could argue that e.g. German spy tools copy the American style so that those decompiling it will think it is American. I argue that is a lot harder that it sounds. Code style is much deeper than whether or not to use braces around lone if clauses. The whole way of thinking, layout of data structures, use of getters/setters or properties, breakdown of what goes where and into which classes, breakup of large methods, etc etc etc. These signatures and many more give one a feel for the software's origin. Not proof, but a very solid foundation for suspicion.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#102

Post by threeseed »

myegorov wrote: post #50

Why would anyone unaffiliated with NSA be alarmed that its tools had been breached? What legitimacy does it have at this point? Serious question.

Israel is not unaffiliated with the NSA.

They are a trusted ally of the USA and an observer in the Five Eyes alliance.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#103

Post by burnte »

rwz wrote: post #45

At this point you just assume that any sufficiently large company based in Russia with capabilities of misusing their power in a way to profit Russian state government will be coerced into doing so or go out of business at some point. Russian thugs have no issues applying pressure till the victim collapses or agrees to cooperate even against their interests. I lived in Russia for 25 years and I saw that happen many t…

Lavabit.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#104

Post by [deleted] »

thrawnjuxt wrote: post #91
rwz wrote: post #45

At this point you just assume that any sufficiently large company based in Russia with capabilities of misusing their power in a way to profit Russian state government will be coerced into doing so or go out of business at some point. Russian thugs have no issues applying pressure till the victim collapses or agrees to cooperate even against their interests. I lived in Russia for 25 years and I saw that happen many t…

Should we be afraid of tools like Intellij as well? I have been looking into Kotlin, and really like it so far, but the idea of a backdoor getting added to my apps by the compiler of the language is straight out of a nightmare.

[deleted]

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#105

Post by dotancohen »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #67
tptacek wrote: post #27

It would be really surprising if Kaspersky survived this.

If he is forced out of the antivirus business then he and his staff could potentially do blackhat stuff. I suspect that everybody would loose from such a development - because a very competent guy he is. (one is supposed to think in terms of capabilities when thinking about security related stuff ;-)

We saw a similar situation with the Russian rocket and nuclear scientists who lost their jobs after START I. Many of them started providing knowledge to rogue states and in at least one incident, to a private 'organization'.

One would hope that we are more careful with removing Kaspersky and his brilliant employees' legitimate professions this time.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#106

Post by lqdc13 »

rtpg wrote: post #69
theylon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your company is in Russia, China or the US, and the government in that country has any interest in the data you collect, you will have to give it away. In Russia and China they just do it, in the US it's a matter of "National Security". I'm not sure why this would surprise anyone - maybe because most of us are on the side of the latter.

Russian and China coercion are on a completely different scale, and we all know it. Especially after the Snowden backlash. Imagine any major Chinese IT company pushing back against government requests like Dreamhost did. Even the biggest ones can't/won't. It helps that the government is a huge investor in most of them, of course. "Chinese IT company rebuffs government demand for user information on its website". This…

In this article and the nyt one they are actually saying US is doing it and it's not even a secret. Here is a quote:

"The N.S.A. bans its analysts from using Kaspersky antivirus at the agency, in large part because the agency has exploited antivirus software for its own foreign hacking operations and knows the same technique is used by its adversaries."

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#107

Post by AKifer »

In fine, that NSA is not that super agency filed with very talented n math/crypto/cs people like the majority depict in their mind. They are employing average folks who use average tools and get caught by average issues. The only difference might be that they are educated and trained to be very efficient at doing one very specific job and that's all.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#108

Post by sschueller »

rwz wrote: post #45

At this point you just assume that any sufficiently large company based in Russia with capabilities of misusing their power in a way to profit Russian state government will be coerced into doing so or go out of business at some point. Russian thugs have no issues applying pressure till the victim collapses or agrees to cooperate even against their interests. I lived in Russia for 25 years and I saw that happen many t…

Couldn't you say the exact same thing about any company in the United States? Instead of thugs we have payoffs, secret warrants and courts.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#109

Post by rounce »

threeseed wrote: post #98
thrawnjuxt wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we be afraid of tools like Intellij as well? I have been looking into Kotlin, and really like it so far, but the idea of a backdoor getting added to my apps by the compiler of the language is straight out of a nightmare.

Just decompile your built JAR files and go through the source code yourself if you're worried. http://www.benf.org/other/cfr/ Also JetBrains is based in Czech Republic not Russia.

JetBrains is registered in the Czech Republic but most development takes place in St Petersburg.

Re: Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Then Tipped NSA Its Tools Had Been Breached

#110

Post by azureel »

foxhedgehog wrote: post #88
geowwy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that is because Russia and China don't feel very secure compared to the US for various historical/geopolitical reasons. The US govt is known to act ruthlessly when it feels there's an existential threat.

As a Ukrainian Jew, the idea that Russia doesn't act as, if not more, ruthlessly than the U.S. is pretty laughable.

As a Turkish atheist, I cannot even express my feelings on the Internet.
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