RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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Kaspersky says it obtained suspected NSA hacking code from U.S. computer
Kaspersky says it obtained suspected NSA hacking code from U.S. computer
Joseph Menn
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab on Wednesday acknowledged that its security software had taken source code for a secret American hacking tool from a personal computer in the United States.
A general view shows the headquarters of the anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab in Moscow, Russia September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
The admission came in a statement from the embattled company that described preliminary results from an internal inquiry it launched into media reports that the Russian government used Kaspersky anti-virus software to collect National Security Agency technology.
While the explanation is considered plausible by some security experts, U.S. officials who have been campaigning against using Kaspersky software on sensitive computers are likely to seize on the admission that the company took secret code that was not endangering its customer to justify a ban.
Fears about Kaspersky’s ties to Russian intelligence, and the capacity of its anti-virus software to sniff out and remove files, prompted an escalating series of warnings and actions from U.S. authorities over the past year. They culminated in the Department of Homeland Security last month barring government agencies from using Kaspersky products.
In a statement, the company said it stumbled on the code a year earlier than the recent newspaper reports had it, in 2014. It said logs showed that the consumer version of Kaspersky’s popular product had been analyzing questionable software from a U.S. computer and found a zip file that was flagged as malicious.
While reviewing the file’s contents, an analyst discovered it contained the source code for a hacking tool later attributed to what Kaspersky calls the Equation Group. The analyst reported the matter to Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky, who ordered that the company’s copy of the code be destroyed, the company said.
“Following a request from the CEO, the archive was deleted from all our systems,” the company said. It said no third parties saw the code, though the media reports had said the spy tool had ended up in Russian government hands.
The Wall Street Journal said on Oct. 5 that hackers working for the Russian government appeared to have targeted the NSA worker by using Kaspersky software to identify classified files. The New York Times reported on Oct. 10 that Israeli officials reported the operation to the United States after they hacked into Kaspersky’s network.
Kaspersky did not say whether the computer belonged to an NSA worker who improperly took home secret files, which is what U.S. officials say happened. Kaspersky denied the Journal’s report that its programs searched for keywords including “top secret.”
The company said it found no evidence that it had been hacked by Russian spies or anyone except the Israelis, though it suggested others could have obtained the tools by hacking into the American’s computer through a back door it later spotted there.
The new 2014 date of the incident is intriguing, because Kaspersky only announced its discovery of an espionage campaign by the Equation Group in February 2015. At that time, Reuters cited former NSA employees who said that Equation Group was an NSA project.
Kaspersky’s Equation Group report was one of its most celebrated findings, since it indicated that the group could infect firmware on most computers. That gave the NSA almost undetectable presence.
Kaspersky later responded via email to a question by Reuters to confirm that the company had first discovered the so-called Equation Group programs in the spring of 2014.
It also did not say how often it takes uninfected, non-executable files, which normally would pose no threat, from users’ computers.
Former employees told Reuters in July that the company used that technique to help identify suspected hackers. A Kaspersky spokeswoman at the time did not explicitly deny the claim but complained generally about “false allegations.”
After that, the stories emerged suggesting that Kaspersky was a witting or unwitting partner in espionage against the United States.
Kaspersky’s consumer anti-virus software has won high marks from reviewers.
It said Monday that it would submit the source code of its software and future updates for inspection by independent parties.
Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by Jim Finkle and Eric Auchard
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
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Good thread again.
Man Trumpset and Nunes are pathetic.
It'll be some time before we see a pathetic bunch of people like Trumpset and the Trump admin again.
Imagine following a person like Trump?
For real everyone pirates something.
Kaspersky: We uploaded US documents but quickly deleted them
Kaspersky: We uploaded US documents but quickly deleted them
PARIS (AP) — Sometime in 2014, a group of analysts walked into the office of Eugene Kaspersky, the ebullient founder of Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, to deliver some sobering news.
Kaspersky’s anti-virus software had automatically scraped powerful digital surveillance tools off a computer in the United States and the analysts were worried: The data’s headers clearly identified the files as classified.
“They immediately came to my office,” Kaspersky recalled, “and they told me that they have a problem.”
He said there was no hesitation about what to do with the cache.
“It must be deleted,” Kaspersky says he told them.
The incident, recounted by Kaspersky during a brief telephone interview on Tuesday and supplemented by a timeline and other information provided by company officials, could not immediately be corroborated. But it’s the first public acknowledgement of a story that has been building for the past three weeks — that Kaspersky’s popular anti-virus program uploaded powerful digital espionage tools belonging to the National Security Agency from a computer in the United States and sent them to servers in Moscow.
The account provides new perspective on the U.S. government’s recent move to blacklist Kaspersky from federal computer networks, even if it still leaves important questions unanswered.
To hear Kaspersky tell it, the incident was an accident borne of carelessness.
Analysts at his company were already on the trail of the Equation Group — a powerful group of hackers later exposed as an arm of the NSA — when a computer in the United States was flagged for further investigation. The machine’s owner, identified in media reports as an NSA worker, had run anti-virus scans on their home computer after it was infected by a pirated copy of Microsoft Office, according to a Kaspersky timeline released Wednesday.
The scan didn’t just treat the infection. It also triggered an alert for Equation Group files the worker had left in a compressed archive which was then spirited to Moscow for analysis.
Kaspersky’s story at least partially matches accounts published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. All three publications recently reported that someone at the NSA’s elite hacking unit lost control of some of the agency’s powerful surveillance tools after they brought their work home with them, leaving what should have been closely guarded code on a personal computer running Kaspersky’s anti-virus software.
But information security experts puzzling over the hints dropped by anonymous government officials are still wondering at whether Kaspersky is suspected of deliberately hunting for confidential data or was merely doing its job by sniffing out suspicious files.
Much of the ambiguity is down to the nature of modern anti-virus software, which routinely submits rogue files back to company servers for analysis. The software can easily be quietly tweaked to scoop up other files, too: perhaps classified documents belonging to a foreign rival’s government, for example.
Concerns have been fanned by increasingly explicit warnings from U.S. government officials after tensions with Russia escalated in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.
Kaspersky denies any inappropriate link to the Russian government, and said in his interview that any classified documents inadvertently swept up by his software would be destroyed on discovery.
“If we see confidential or classified information, it will be immediately deleted and that was exactly (what happened in) this case,” he said, adding that the order had since been written into company policy.
An AP request for a copy of that policy wasn’t immediately granted.
Kaspersky’s account still has some gaps. For example, why not alert American authorities to what happened? The newspaper reports alleged that the U.S. learned that Kaspersky had acquired the NSA’s tools via an Israeli spying operation.
Kaspersky declined to say whether he had ever alerted U.S. authorities to the incident.
“Do you really think that I want to see in the news that I tried to contact the NSA to report this case?” he said at one point. “Definitely I don’t want to see that in the news.”
So did he alert the NSA to the incident or not?
“I’m afraid I can’t answer the question,” he said.
Even if some questions linger, Kaspersky’s explanation sounds plausible, said Jake Williams, a former NSA analyst and the founder of Augusta, Georgia-based Rendition InfoSec. He noted that Kaspersky was pitching itself at the time to government clients in the United States and may not have wanted the risk of having classified documents on its network.
“It makes sense that they pulled those up and looked at the classification marking and then deleted them,” said Williams. “I can see where it’s so toxic you may not want it on your systems.”
As for the insinuation that someone at the NSA not only walked highly classified software out of the building but put it on a computer running a bootleg version of Office, Williams called it “absolutely wild.”
“It’s hard to imagine a worse PR nightmare for the NSA,” he said.
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Online:
Kaspersky’s timeline:
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/internal-investigation-preliminary-results/19894/
Preliminary results of the internal investigation into alleged incidents reported by US media
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
:MuellerWhat:
:smarttrump:
"Love Fest" :rockwtfusay:
"Love Fest" :rockwtfusay:
He still hasn't addressed "horrible" "dishonest' "liddle" Eminem has he?
Commented on Mark Cuban talking about a run?
Threw anybody under the bus while simultaneously applauding the decision to basically hire 2 guys and a truck to restore power in PR?
Probably just too busy watching faux on dvr
Commented on Mark Cuban talking about a run?
Threw anybody under the bus while simultaneously applauding the decision to basically hire 2 guys and a truck to restore power in PR?
Probably just too busy watching faux on dvr
REMEMBER, THIS IS THE GUY WHO DIED:
Trump-Russia investigators gathering docs from estate of GOP operative, sources say
Trump-Russia investigators gathering docs from estate of GOP operative, sources say
PTRSIH/Twitter
Peter W. Smith, a longtime GOP operative who died in May 2017, is seen here in his undated Twitter profile photo.
U.S. Senate investigators sought and received materials from the estate of Peter W. Smith, a longtime Republican operative who reportedly acknowledged shortly before his death that he spearheaded an effort to obtain missing Hillary Clinton emails from Russian hackers, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
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Add Russia as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Russia news, video, and analysis from ABC News.
Smith, a private-equity executive from Chicago who had been active in Republican politics, died at age 81 on May 14. Ten days earlier, he told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that he had led a robust bid during the early months of the 2016 presidential contest to find what he thought were hacked copies of Clinton’s emails in hopes of using them against her during the campaign.
Of interest to investigators, the sources told ABC News, are documents and electronic communications that could help determine whether Smith worked in concert with anyone from the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has asked for those documents and the Smith estate has begun turning them over, the sources said.
William Ensing, the attorney for the Smith estate, declined to comment when reached Tuesday at his Lake Forest, Illinois office.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the Intelligence Committee chairman, did not respond to questions, and Virginia's Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat, declined comment on the matter.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Smith had gathered technology experts, lawyers and a Russian-speaking investigator based in Europe to go after the emails. The news reports, citing copies of emails and other documents Smith and his team prepared, suggested that Smith received help in that effort from Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr.
Attorneys from Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son both declined to answer questions from ABC News about any alleged contact between their clients and Smith.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is one of four congressional committees looking into aspects of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. The bipartisan effort in the Senate has focused in part on determining whether Trump advisors did anything to encourage or assist Russian agents in their efforts to influence American voters.
The companion effort by the intelligence committee in the House has been beset by partisan infighting, with House Democrats accusing GOP leadership of trying to divert attention away from Russian interference and onto other topics.
The congressional investigations are separate from the criminal probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of federal prosecutors.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
Trump-Russia investigators gathering docs from estate of GOP operative, sources say
Trump-Russia investigators gathering docs from estate of GOP operative, sources say
Peter W. Smith, a longtime GOP operative who died in May 2017, is seen here in his undated Twitter profile photo.
U.S. Senate investigators sought and received materials from the estate of Peter W. Smith, a longtime Republican operative who reportedly acknowledged shortly before his death that he spearheaded an effort to obtain missing Hillary Clinton emails from Russian hackers, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Interested in Russia?
Add Russia as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Russia news, video, and analysis from ABC News.
Smith, a private-equity executive from Chicago who had been active in Republican politics, died at age 81 on May 14. Ten days earlier, he told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that he had led a robust bid during the early months of the 2016 presidential contest to find what he thought were hacked copies of Clinton’s emails in hopes of using them against her during the campaign.
Of interest to investigators, the sources told ABC News, are documents and electronic communications that could help determine whether Smith worked in concert with anyone from the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has asked for those documents and the Smith estate has begun turning them over, the sources said.
William Ensing, the attorney for the Smith estate, declined to comment when reached Tuesday at his Lake Forest, Illinois office.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the Intelligence Committee chairman, did not respond to questions, and Virginia's Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat, declined comment on the matter.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Smith had gathered technology experts, lawyers and a Russian-speaking investigator based in Europe to go after the emails. The news reports, citing copies of emails and other documents Smith and his team prepared, suggested that Smith received help in that effort from Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr.
Attorneys from Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son both declined to answer questions from ABC News about any alleged contact between their clients and Smith.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is one of four congressional committees looking into aspects of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. The bipartisan effort in the Senate has focused in part on determining whether Trump advisors did anything to encourage or assist Russian agents in their efforts to influence American voters.
The companion effort by the intelligence committee in the House has been beset by partisan infighting, with House Democrats accusing GOP leadership of trying to divert attention away from Russian interference and onto other topics.
The congressional investigations are separate from the criminal probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of federal prosecutors.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
:mjsneaklaugh:
:MichelleOsideeye:
:MichelleOsideeye: