Report: US, UK look for holes in Russia’s Kaspersky Lab soft

MOSCOW, Jun 23 (PRIME) -- The U.S.’ National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software products, including those of Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, in order to track users and infiltrate networks, The Intercept reported late Monday.

The online media referred to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored Web and e-mail traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software. One security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents is Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, which has a holding registered in the U.K., claims more than 270,000 corporate clients, and says it protects more than 400 million people with its products.

British spies aimed to thwart Kaspersky software in part through a technique known as software reverse engineering, or SRE, according to a top-secret warrant renewal request. The NSA has also studied Kaspersky Lab’s software for weaknesses, obtaining sensitive customer information by monitoring communications between the software and Kaspersky servers, according to a draft top-secret report. The U.S. spy agency also appears to have examined e-mails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities.

According to a top-secret GCHQ warrant renewal request written in 2008 and published by The Intercept, the British spy agency viewed Kaspersky software as an obstruction to its hacking operations and needed to reverse engineer it to find ways to neutralize the problem. Doing so required obtaining a warrant.

“Personal security products such as the Russian anti-virus software Kaspersky continue to pose a challenge to GCHQ’s CNE (Computer Network Exploitation) capability and SRE is essential in order to be able to exploit such software and to prevent detection of our activities,” the warrant renewal request said. “Examination of Kaspersky and other such products continues.” The warrant renewal request also states that GCHQ reverse engineers anti-virus programs to assess their fitness for use by government agencies.

It is unclear what GCHQ accomplished in its analysis of Kaspersky software, but GCHQ has repeatedly reverse engineered software to discover vulnerabilities. Rather than report the vulnerabilities to the companies, spy agencies have quietly stockpiled numerous exploits for a wide range of commercial hardware and software, using them to hack adversaries.

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