Kaspersky was the centre of the news after information revealed the Russian government was using it to target US Federal government employees into stealing vital information. According to a report by NewYork times, the Russian government used the program search computers across the world with the hope of finding information on American intelligence programs.
When the Russian hackers know that their activities online was being monitored by the Israeli intelligence, they stopped the hacking attempt. The Russians used the popular anti-virus program, Kaspersky for the hacking. Kaspersky is used by around 40million people, including American government agencies.
NYT reported that the hacker succeeded in using the program to steal classified NSA documents from an employee who had the anti-virus program installed in his home.
Kaspersky detected that the Israeli intrusion into their network in mid-2015, and conducted an investigation that was later released to the public by the Kaspersky antirus company.
Though not knowing who might have hacked into the network to launch the attack to finding American military intelligence, Kaspersky as a company had previously seen a same pattern of attack in 2010 by a US-Israeli coalition.
The attack dubbed "Duqu" was used to attack the Iran Natanz nuclear facility, and destroy fifth of Iran centrifuges.
Kaspersky noticed similar pattern of the coalition, and said this seems like a country did that from the coalition, therefore dubbing the new attack"Duqu 2.0."
According to Kaspersky, Israeli hackers are well known for infiltrating systems, stealing passwords, erasing emails and documents and also taking screenshots using different sophisticated tools.
Kaspersky lab denied the report of its cooperation with Russian hackers, the lab said;
Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts. The company then added "respectfully requests any relevant, verifiable information that would enable the company to begin an investigation at the earliest opportunity"
Israeli officials later spoke to the NSA that the Russian government was using the anti-virus to spy on US citizens and also stealing information from federal government employees. They said they had detected this during the time they hacked into the Kaspersky network, but won't say the magnitude of information that was stolen.
The Israeli agency then showed evidence of their espionage with documents findings and screenshots it took during the time of the espionage on Kaspersky network.
While the NSA had been briefed by the Israeli on their findings about Russia hacking, only last September did the Department of Homeland Security order all federal executive branch agencies to remove Kaspersky on their devices within 90 days.
