NSA

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. 

NSA whistleblower. Edward Snowden has said in the past that our smartphones are transmitting information that could be monitored by different agencies, especially the NSA.

To help block such transmission, Snowden and co-designer, Andrew “Bunnie” Huang gave a presentation via video link to the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday where he presented a device that lets the phone owner knows when his device is transmitting data over WI-FI, Bluetooth and been exploited by unauthorized security agencies.

The initial design of the phone called the introspection engine, have a small, monochromatic display, which shows whether the phone is “dark”, or whether it is transmitting data.

The device is still an academic project and not yet massively distributed to the market, but the device might change the way consumers view their smartphones as "tracking device"

Presenting the phone case, Edward Snowden said;

 If you have a phone in your pocket that’s turned on, a long-lived record of your movements has been created, As a result of the way the cell network functions your device is constantly shouting into the air by means of radio signals a unique identity that validates you to the phone company,” he added.

And this unique identity is not only saved by that phone company, but it can also be observed as it travels over the air by independent, even more dangerous third parties.

Snowden, former NSA and CIA contractor, currently living in Russia leaked classified intelligence documents in June 2013, and the documents show the extent the US government has been spying on its people, foregin government and political leaders around the world.