Kaspersky Lab’s Network attacked by Duqu 2.0 – Opens a chilling new chapter

Kaspersky Lab a leading anti-virus providers has exposed that its personal computers were recently attacked by hackers.

The hack was aimed to attack on its latest technologies, as believed by Kaspersky Lab. The company said the hack consist of up to 3 formerly unknown hacking techniques. Kaspersky stated that it was enduring to complete the investigations, but strongly believed that they detected the attack at an “early spring”.

The Moscow based company said, the data of its customers is safe. The sophisticated hack stayed away from customer data and mainly focused on the Kaspersky’s intellectual property and systems, the firm said. Kaspersky has since cover the holdings that were used for the hack.

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the company said, “Spying on cybersecurity companies is a very dangerous tendency. The only way to protect the world is to have law enforcement agencies and security companies fighting such attacks openly. We will always report attacks regardless of their origin.”

As per estimation of Verizon 700 million hacked records from firms worldwide led to damages of $400 million, only within the year of 2014. The estimation is just based on 70 companies that added information to their yearly study, so the whole figure could surely be high.

The attackers were “a generation ahead of anything seen,” as said by Kaspersky in a comprehensive explanation of the attack on its official website. The hackers used a technique that targets on “zero day” vulnerabilities, or make a backdoor in the software that the programmers don’t identify.

Although, Kaspersky didn’t blame any country for the said attack, however it has raised fingers at Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom previously – reports a cyber-espionage.

The company linked the hack to the anonymous creators of a Trojan called Duqu, which was used in hacking attacks on India, Iran, Ukrain and France back in 2011.

The director of Kaspersky’s global analysis and research team Costin Raiu commented, “This highly sophisticated attack used up to three zero-day [previously unknown] exploits, which is very impressive – the costs must have been very high.”

Costin cautioned that the company had proof “Duqu version 2.0” assaults had been prepared for other objectives too, including many venues utilized for talks among West and Iran about the atomic programme.

F-Secure’s chief research officer, Mikko Hypponen said, “Duqu 2.0 seems to be the biggest [cybersecurity] news of the year so far – it’s major new malware from a major source. But we have previously seen security companies used as a way to reach other targets.”

He added, “The prime example of this was RSA, which got hacked four years ago, when we believe the target was a defence contractor in the US, which used RSA’s technology.”

On the other hand Kaspersky stated that the company can “attest” that its partners and clients stayed safe.

Ali Raza Ali is a freelance journalist, having 5 years of experience in web journalism and marketing. He contributes to various online publications. With a Master degree, now he combines his passions for writing about internet security and technology for SecurityGladiators. When he is not working, he loves traveling and playing games.

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