Israel hacked Kaspersky, then tipped the NSA that its tools had been breached

[enhanced_deficit]

Related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh04uu1EkIU

James Woods on Obama: He’s the 'gift from hell that keeps on giving'
The latest came this week, in response to a report from British press that revealed the National Security Agency commonly provides Israel with intelligence data — without first stripping out private and personal information on American citizens. The Guardian in London reported the item, the latest in its coverage of document leaks from Edward Snowden.
Mr. Woods unleashed his views of the matter — and of Mr. Obama's role in allowing the practice to occur — on Twitter.
He wrote: "Report: Data on Americans shared with Israel ... Obama: the gift from hell that keeps on giving."




Main

Our second closest ally after Saudi Arabia in the whole of mideast is looking out for our best interests:


Israel hacked Kaspersky, then tipped the NSA that its tools had been breached
By Ellen Nakashima October 10

In 2015, Israeli government hackers saw something suspicious in the computers of a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm: hacking tools that could only have come from the National Security Agency.
Israel notified the NSA, where alarmed officials immediately began a hunt for the breach, according to people familiar with the matter, who said an investigation by the agency revealed that the tools were in the possession of the Russian government.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...e5d_story.html

[angelatc]

Gee - I wonder how many headlines we'd be seeing if Russia had done all these things?

[Raginfridus]

Gee - I wonder how many headlines we'd be seeing if Russia had done all these things?

MSM would kindly let us know we had declared war after the Russians had retaliated:

[Swordsmyth]

Germany Says It Found "No Evidence" Kaspersky Helped Russia Spy On US

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-11/germany-says-it-found-no-evidence-kaspersky-helped-russia-spy-us

[AZJoe]

So the allegation is that Russia is capturing Washington's spyware it uses to spy on everyone, and we know this because Israel admits that it is spying on Russia
So we're supposed to be mad because Washington's spying is being caught?

[AZJoe]

So Israeli government hacker spies notify the NSA that the anti-malware Kaspersky systems have identified and captured spyware hacking tools and malware manufactured by the NSA.
Could the irony and hypocrisy get any deeper?
And shouldn't all anti-malware products be doing the same? Anti-malware is supposed to detect and capture malware, which is analyzed to prevent further infection.
Why aren't the American products also capturing the NSA malware tools?

[AZJoe]

From Moon of Alabama

The Russian company Kaspersky Lab makes and sells the probably best anti-virus protection software available. All anti-virus software packages need full access to the system they run on. It is the only way to assure that the packages themselves are not compromised by some super-virus. Anti-virus packages upload malware they find for further analysis. …

Since May 2017 Congress made noise about banning Kaspersky products from the U.S. Defense Department and other government entities. In September the Department of Homeland Security order all federal agencies to remove Kaspersky software from their system. …

Similar accusations could be made about any anti-virus product. U.S. and British spies systematically target all anti-virus products and companies:

The British spy agency regarded the Kaspersky software in particular as a hindrance to its hacking operations and sought a way to neutralize it.
...
An NSA slide describing "Project CAMBERDADA" lists at least 23 antivirus and security firms that were in that spy agency's sights. They include the Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure, the Slovakian firm Eset, Avast software from the Czech Republic. and Bit-Defender from Romania. Notably missing from the list are the American anti-virus firms Symantec and McAfee as well as the UK-based firm Sophos.

That the NSA and the British GCHQ did not list U.S. and British made anti-virus products on their "to do" list lets one assume that these packages can already be controlled by them.

In February 2015 Kaspersky announced that it found U.S. and UK government spying and sabotage software infecting computers in some 42 countries. It released a detailed report about the "Equation group", its name for NSA and GCHQ spy tools. In June 2015 Kaspersky Lab detected a breach in its own systems by an Israeli government malware. It published an extensive autopsy of the breach and the malware programs used in it. Meanwhile the NSA attacked Kaspersky products and customers:
The NSA has also studied Kaspersky Lab’s software for weaknesses, obtaining sensitive customer information by monitoring communications between the software and Kaspersky servers, according to a draft top-secret report. The U.S. spy agency also appears to have examined emails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities.

Later that year the CIA and FBI even tried to recruit Kaspersky employees but were warned off.

That the U.S. government now attempts to damage Kaspersky is likely a sign that Kaspersky Lab and its products continue to be a hard-target which the NSA and GCHQ find difficult to breach.

To justify the public campaign against Kaspersky, which began in May, U.S. officials recently started to provide a series of cover stories. A diligent reading of these stories reveals inconsistencies and a lack of logic. …

A NSA employee copied code of top-secret NSA spy tools and put it on his private computer. … The Kaspersky anti-virus software, which the NSA employee had installed, [correctly] identified parts of these tools as malware and uploaded them for analysis to the Kapersky's central detection database. The Kaspersky software behaved exactly as it should. Any other anti-virus software behaves similar if it detects a possibly new virus. …

But nothing was hacked. … the Kaspersky tool was legally installed and worked as it should. … There is no hint in the story to any evidence for its core claim of "Russian hackers". …

The German government found no evidence that Kaspersky is spying for Russia. Its federal data security office (BSI) trashes the U.S. reports:
“The BSI has no indications at this time that the process occurred as described in the media.” …

While the NYT asserts that the Russian government had access to the Kaspersky systems, the Washington Post does not assert that at all. … The NYT story is based on "current and former government officials", not on the usual "U.S.officials". It might well be that Israeli spies are spinning the NYT tale. …

If the story were true the NSA should have reacted immediately. All Kaspersky products should have been banned from U.S. government systems as soon as the problem was known. The NSA allowed the Russian government, for more than a year, to sniff through all systems of the more than two dozen American government agencies (including the military) which use the Kaspersky products? That does not make sense.

These recently provided stories stink. There is no evidence provided for the assertions therein. They make the false claim that the NSA employees computer was "hacked". Their timelines make no sense. If not complete fantasies they are likely to be heavily spun to achieve a specific goal: to justify the banning of Kaspersky products from U.S. markets.

I regard these stories as part of "blame Russia" campaign which is used by the military-industrial complex to justify new defense spending. They may also be useful in removing a good security product, which the NSA failed to breach, from the "western" markets.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10...aign.html#more