Israel Discovers Russian Hack of US Government

The Fellowship  |  October 11, 2017

Two soldiers looking at a computer screen together.
Israel Discovers Russian Hack of US Government

Israel and the United States are close allies, often cooperating in matters of concern to both nations’ security. This occurred once again, The Times of Israel reports, when Israeli intelligence discovered that Russia was hacking the U.S. government in order to steal American intelligence information:

Israeli intelligence officials were behind a US decision to remove all Kaspersky Lab software from government servers after they alerted their American counterparts to Russian hackers using the anti-virus software to steal classified information, according to US media reports Wednesday.

Over a two-year operation, Israeli intelligence agencies hacked into Kaspersky’s network and discovered that the software used globally by some 400 million people had been breached by Russian hackers who were using the program to find code names of US intelligence programs, according to The New York Times, which first broke the story.

Sources who were briefed of the developments said the Israelis provided the US National Security Agency with “solid evidence” of the Kremlin’s work based on a two-year hacking operation begun in 2014, the newspaper said. Among the information the Israelis allegedly gleaned from hacking Kasperksy were passwords, screenshots, emails and documents.

Last month, after receiving the Israeli report, the US Department of Homeland Security banned federal agencies from using any computer software supplied by Kaspersky Lab and ordered the products removed within 90 days…

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