IRAN-NUCLEAR/SPYING-ISRAEL Cyberattack targeted Iran nuclear talks venues - Kaspersky Lab

Record ID: 150895

  • Title: IRAN-NUCLEAR/SPYING-ISRAEL Cyberattack targeted Iran nuclear talks venues - Kaspersky Lab
  • Date: 11th June 2015
  • Summary: COMPUTER SCREEN
  • Embargoed: 26th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA8HD25WTJZHSM4EUB03ZOJGN9D
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A computer virus was used to hack into venues linked to international talks on Iran's nuclear programme, a spokesperson of Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday (June 11).
    Kaspersky said it found the software in three European hotels used in the negotiations involving Iran and six world powers and also on Kaspersky's own computers.
    Both Kaspersky and U.S. security company Symantec said the virus shared some programming with previously discovered espionage software called Duqu, which security experts believe to have been developed by Israelis.
    Most notably, some of the new 2014-2015 infections are linked to the P5+1 events and venues related to the negotiations with Iran about a nuclear deal," the statement said.
    "P5+1" refers to the six world powers negotiating with Iran on curbs to its disputed nuclear programme - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The talks have been held in Geneva, Lausanne, Montreux, Munich and Vienna.
    The Head Antivirus Expert of Kaspersky Lab, Alexander Gostev said that they discovered some harmful code in their network several months ago.
    "This story began several months ago when we discovered that hackers broke into our local network. We've discovered some harmful code and in order to understand whether we are the only target of these hackers we've started a large-scale world-wide investigation with the purpose to find out who else suffered from it," Gostev said.
    "We found tens of victims of this harmful program and among them there was a separate group - three hotels in central Europe in which at the beginning of this year, in spring, Iran nuclear talks have been taking place with the participation of the US, Russia, EU and Iran," Gostev added.
    Gostev said that their guess was that the attackers tried to access their surveillance systems in the hotels.
    "In all of these hotels we've discovered these harmful programmes and moduls they contained are used for high-level espionage, so to say. It was not just a banal theft of file system. Moduls found there were used to intercept and compress video or sound. So one of our guesses is that probably the attackers tried to get access to surveillance system, to video cameras installed in these hotels in order to record their information and to fully monitor what's going on," Gostev said.
    But an Israeli deputy minister dismissed as baseless the reports that Israel may have had a connection to the computer virus.
    Israeli government officials had declined to comment, but on Thursday Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely denied Israel was involved and said it was more important "to prevent a bad agreement where at the end of the day we find ourselves with a Iranian nuclear umbrella."
    Israeli media widely reported the news on Thursday, with headlines reading: "Israeli virus in nuclear talks", and "Report: Israel spied on Iran talks with computer virus".
    Cybersecurity expert and head of Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University, Professor Yitzhak Ben-Israel, said cyber attacks can rarely be traced back to the original attacker and that while it could be Israel, he didn't negate other options.
    "I'm not rejecting the hypothesis that it was done by other Western countries, like the American themselves, in order to spy on the Iranians. Because everyone would like to know what they speak in closed rooms before they come to the negotiations room," Ben-Israel, an Israeli major-general in reserve who will chair Israel's annual cybersecurity conference next week attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , told Reuters.
    In February, the United States accused Israel of using selective leaks from the talks to distort the U.S. position.
    Israel has denounced the diplomatic opening to Iran, saying it doubts any agreement arising from the talks will sufficiently restrain the nuclear programme of its arch-enemy.
    The West suspects Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapons capability from its enrichment of uranium. Iran says it wants nuclear energy only for electricity and medical isotopes.
    During various rounds of the talks, Israeli officials said they knew what was being discussed from various sources including intelligence gathering and information relayed by allies.
    The officials did not elaborate on the latter, but asserted that Israel never spied on the United States, its closest ally.
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