The Russian-headquartered anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab has hit back at reports it deliberately extracted sensitive files from a US National Security Agency worker’s computer.
The allegations stem from a Wall Street Journal report in early October.
Russian hackers had used Kaspersky software to identify classified files on the NSA contractor’s home computer, which they then stole, it said.
It later emerged Kaspersky had also copied files off the PC itself.
But the company has now said this was not deliberate and any classified documents were destroyed.
It said its researchers had been investigating malicious software created by “the Equation Group”, which is widely understood to be Kaspersky’s codeword for the NSA.
And this research had included looking for signatures relating to known Equation activity on machines running the company’s software.
On 11 September 2014, the company said, one of its products deployed on a home computer with an internet protocol (IP) address in Baltimore, Maryland – close to where
— source bbc.com | 16 Nov 2017