(Moscow) Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky has announced that it has discovered a hacking campaign that targeted it, with the FSB accusing the American NSA of being behind this cyberattack, amid extreme tensions between Moscow and Washington.
“Kaspersky Lab researchers have discovered previously unknown malware that attacks iOS devices” (from the American brand Apple), the company said in a statement on Thursday, according to which “dozens of employees” have been targeted.
During this campaign, named “Operation Triangulation” by Kaspersky, one of the world’s leading antivirus companies, the main process was as follows: “malware infiltrates victims’ devices […] via a hidden iMessage, then it kicks in and takes full control of the device and user data.”
All this without the assistance, at any time, of the owner of the device, a method reminiscent of the attacks called “zero click” by experts.
“After that, the (corrupted) iMessage was automatically deleted,” the statement said.
“The goal of the attackers is to spy,” denounced Kaspersky, according to which “the installed software discreetly transmitted information from the victim’s device to remote servers”.
The company claimed to have found traces of infection dating back to 2019 and that “the attack has continued” until today, without saying however who could be behind this hacking campaign.
The Russian security services (FSB) have, for their part, accused the American National Security Agency (NSA) of “close cooperation” with Apple, a clear allusion to who would be responsible according to them.
According to the FSB, “several thousand Apple devices” have been “infected”, ensuring that numbers of people working in Russian embassies abroad had been “revealed” during this hacking campaign.
In a separate press release, the boss and founder of Kaspersky, Eugène Kaspersky, told him that the group “is convinced that (he) was not the main target of this cyberattack” which targeted “middle and senior managers” of his business.
Specializing in cybersecurity, Kaspersky, which publishes antivirus software of the same name, was added in March 2022, just after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, to the blacklist of the American telecommunications policeman, Washington accusing it of pose a “threat to national security”.
Founded in 1997 and regularly accused in recent years of proximity to the Russian intelligence services – which it defends itself – the company claims 400 million user customers in more than 200 countries around the world.