Two storage-product makers in Irvine are connected to one of the most advanced cyber-espionage programs to surface.
Moscow-based IT security provider Kaspersky Labs recently disclosed in a 44-page report that hard drives made by Western Digital Corp. and Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc.—and shipped to specific locations around the world—were targeted and infected with a lethal family of viruses. The apparent purpose of the viruses was to obtain sensitive data from foreign military, Islamic activists, energy companies, telecoms, media outlets and government officials, among others.
It took Kaspersky analysts nearly a year to uncover the elaborate and complex breach that infected about 500 hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, its San Jose-based subsidiary, HGST, Cupertino rival Seagate, Toshiba and IBM. The drives were infected with malware embedded in firmware, a combination of software and hardware installed at the initial point of manufacturing that allows hardware updates.
Western Digital, the world’s largest disk drive maker, told the Business Journal in an email that it is reviewing the report.
It also said that, “Prior to the report, we had no knowledge of the described cyber-espionage program.”
“We’re concerned about it because the sanctity of the data that is stored on our devices by our customers is our No. 1 priority,” Chief Executive Steve Milligan said in a recent interview. “Anything that challenges that is a problem.”
TAEC, the North American chip and memory products unit of Toshiba Corp., told the Business Journal it had no knowledge of the spyware or the validity of the report and denied any wrongdoing or collusion with government entities.
“Toshiba has not provided any [hard disk drive] or [solid state drive] source code to government agencies in support of any cyber espionage efforts,” the company said.
Kaspersky stopped short of naming the National Security Agency as the perpetrator, though it did link the similarities between the most recent attack and methods used in Stuxnet, a worm that crippled about 1,000 centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program in 2010; the attack was later revealed to be a joint operation between the U.S. and Israel.
“This is a nation state-sponsored actor who is looking for some intelligence which might be valuable in the global geopolitical stage,” said Vitaly Kamluk, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team. “It’s really a ground breaking revolutionary new approach to focus on hard drives. We have never seen this before.”
He called the attackers the most sophisticated in the world; several government and technology security experts have linked the clandestine NSA to the recent attack.
Spyware had infected PCs in as many as 30 countries, including Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Syria and Yemen, according to the report.
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