Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab revealed it recently detected and neutralized what it called a sophisticated, well-planned attack on their network, proving that sometimes, even the experts are vulnerable to hackers.
Kaspersky founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky said he believes the attack was carried out by a government-backed group. Furthermore, based on the data the bad actors went after, he feels this was an obvious case of industrial espionage.
The firm tells us that those who infiltrated their network didn’t go after any customer data. Instead, they targeted the company’s research and development division which means none of the company’s products or services were affected. That’s good news for customers as it stands today but a bit alarming for Kaspersky in the long-term.
Getting a look at Kaspersky’s R&D efforts, its source code and intellectual property could give hackers a leg up when it comes to creating future malware. But even that scenario seems rather unlikely as code quickly becomes obsolete and you’d need access to the people that created it to fully understand the meaning of every detail.
Kaspersky said the Duqu 2.0 malware used in this attack was extremely advanced as it resides in the RAM, involved up to three previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities and tries very hard to avoid making any changes to the hard drive. Its level of sophistication likely means that millions of dollars went into its development.
