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'Very High Level of Confidence' Russia Used Kaspersky Software For Devastating NSA Leaks (yahoo.com)
bricko shares a report from Yahoo Finance: Three months after U.S. officials asserted that Russian intelligence used popular antivirus company Kaspersky to steal U.S. classified information, there are indications that the alleged espionage is related to a public campaign of highly damaging NSA leaks by a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers. In August 2016, the Shadow Brokers began leaking classified NSA exploit code that amounted to hacking manuals. In October 2017, U.S. officials told major U.S. newspapers that Russian intelligence leveraged software sold by Kaspersky to exfiltrate classified documents from certain computers. (Kaspersky software, like all antivirus software, requires access to everything stored on a computer so that it can scan for malicious software.) And last week the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. investigators "now believe that those manuals [leaked by Shadow Brokers] may have been obtained using Kaspersky to scan computers on which they were stored." Members of the computer security industry agree with that suspicion. "I think there's a very high level of confidence that the Shadow Brokers dump was directly related to Kaspersky ... and it's very much attributable," David Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSec, told Yahoo Finance. "Unfortunately, we can only hear that from the intelligence side about how they got that information to see if it's legitimate."
Where is this evidence? I want to see it, all I have seen so far is people saying it happened, no actual evidence. Hell you guys cant even agree on what the russians hacked, or how they did it.
"I think there's a very high level of confidence that the Shadow Brokers dump was directly related to Kaspersky ... and it's very much attributable," David Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSec"
Is Kennedy really a reliable source for this "information" and does anyone really have a "high level of confidence" in anything the US intelligence agencies say or believe?
Looking only at motivation, one must note that Kaspersky was a financially successful company with a bright future in an increasingly critical industry. They owed that to a growing reputation (and a lowered reputation for some competitors). What incentive would motivate them to sell out to any government? The only thing I can think of is (1) A death threat, or (2) a greater amount of money than their expected future profits. I doubt either 1 or 2 and I think it illogical for Kaspersky to break trust that was so valuable to them.
But what about the motivation of the US government? They look bad with so much failure to deal with leaks and malware. And what does any government do to deflect blame? They find a scapegoat! Kaspersky looks like an easy target, especially with the Russia scare. And the American public loves to jump on that sort of bandwagon.
...omphaloskepsis often...