(Disclosure: One of the authors of this report, Morgan Marquis-Boire, spoke at a Kaspersky Lab event in Puerto Rico in 2013 and at another in London in 2014. It means that Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Word or Google Chrome are harder to exploit than 90 percent of the anti-virus products out there.” “Anti-virus products, with only a few exceptions, are years behind security-conscious client-side applications like browsers or document readers. “If you write an exploit for an anti-virus product you’re likely going to get the highest privileges (root, system or even kernel) with just one shot,” Koret told The Intercept in an email. have aggressively probed for weaknesses in software deployed by the companies, which have themselves exposed sophisticated state-sponsored malware.Īnti-virus software is an ideal target for a would-be attacker, according to Joxean Koret, a researcher with Coseinc, a Singapore-based information security consultancy. Spy agencies seem to be engaged in a digital game of cat and mouse with anti-virus software companies the U.S. The efforts to compromise security software were of particular importance because such software is relied upon to defend against an array of digital threats and is typically more trusted by the operating system than other applications, running with elevated privileges that allow more vectors for surveillance and attack. spy agency also appears to have examined emails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities. 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. 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.īritish 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 spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored web and email traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software.
The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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