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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

#111

Post by dotancohen »

comex wrote: post #17
EthanHeilman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kaspersky promptly identified the malware they were working on as malware and uploaded it? If the news story is to be believed, Kaspersky was scanning for classified data using US intelligence codewords as a selector. >I'm sort of surprised Kaspersky had servers vulnerable to Israel I'm not, everyone's servers are vulnerable. Intelligence agencies can buy exploits. If they want in, they get in. >but I'm really surpr…

> If the news story is to be believed, Kaspersky was scanning for classified data using US intelligence codewords as a selector. Assuming you mean the linked article, it doesn’t say that. It says that Kaspersky uses “silent signatures”, which are supposed to be indicators of malware, but could hypothetically be adapted to search for classified data instead. But it doesn’t allege Kaspersky was actually doing that. (ed…

> ...detected in step 720, statistics regarding ... collected in step 740. Then, in step 750, ...

All line numbers are module zero for ten? Is the code written in BASIC with the anticipation of line additions? I miss my C64!

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

#112

Post by dotancohen »

jnbiche wrote: post #14
revelation wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably didn't hack anything, they just have people who receive these AV samples as malware researchers. Any intelligence agency worth their money should. And yes, this is the gist of what's behind all the Kaspersky hysteria. The NSA trying to obscure another extremely embarrassing leak. Every AV software uploads new detections for analysis. It just so happened that this fool used Kaspersky. It's abundantly cle…

Read the original New York Times story, it gives a lot more technical details on the hack than this one[0]. Assuming the Israeli and NYT accounts are to be believed, this was a very deliberate hack. Israel watched in real-time as Kaspersky sent out searches for NSA codename programs on all computers with Kaspersky AV installed (this was related to the whole Duqu 2.0 intrusion into Kaspersky's network that Kaspersky b…

> Israel watched in real-time as Kaspersky sent out searches for NSA codename programs on all computers with Kaspersky AV installed

That happened _after_ Kaspersky identified the "NSA codename programs" as malware. That is exactly what an anti-malware application should do: look for instances of known malware.

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

#113

Post by dang »

HalfwayToDice wrote: post #83
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.

Arrant nonsense

You've been breaking the HN guidelines by repeatedly posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, and also by using HN for flamewars and ideological battle.

We ban such accounts that do these things, so would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop?

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

#114

Post by keyme »

AKifer wrote: post #107

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.

It's the same with any such "mystical" organisation. There are no Hollywood super-humans anywhere. It's regular people cooperating and doing their jobs all the way down.

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

#115

Post by Synaesthesia »

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.

The Soviet Union committed far worse crimes up to the 1950’s. The US did far worse (Vietnam, Iraq, many other wars) since WW2.

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

#116

Post by darawk »

lqdc13 wrote: post #106
rtpg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

That is not the same thing. The fact that they've exploited AV does not mean that they coerced an AV company into installing 0day for them. Those are very very different things.

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

#117

Post by auganov »

carvalho wrote: post #42
_m96l wrote: post #34

Kaspersky 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 i…

Way down this thread, so time to ask the question: Do American anti-virus, social media, and search companies do exactly the same, but for the US military? I've always found it suspicious that Russia and China created their own social networks, email providers, and search engines. Almost like they know the power of a capable search engine or social network for intelligence gathering purposes. Google and US anti-virus…

Care to expand on the "theft and premature release of Stuxnet by Israel"? Most information seems to point to it being a joint US-Israeli creation or even primarily Israeli.

We do know for a fact that US General James Cartwright pleaded guilty to leaking Stuxnet. And then got pardoned by Obama.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by hueving »

AKifer wrote: post #107

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.

They're similar to Google/Apple/Facebook in that regard. Sure there are some great people there, but most devs are just going to be average.

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

#120

Post by coldtea »

carvalho wrote: post #42
_m96l wrote: post #34

Kaspersky 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 i…

Way down this thread, so time to ask the question: Do American anti-virus, social media, and search companies do exactly the same, but for the US military? I've always found it suspicious that Russia and China created their own social networks, email providers, and search engines. Almost like they know the power of a capable search engine or social network for intelligence gathering purposes. Google and US anti-virus…

>Way down this thread, so time to ask the question: Do American anti-virus, social media, and search companies do exactly the same, but for the US military?

Is the Pope catholic?

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