Click here: Sgt Reckless - Korean War Horse Hero - YouTube (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Comment from a very dear friend and fellow memo reader: "Maybe in the movie version, Bill Clinton can play Harvey Weinstein and Monica Lewinsky can play Gwineth Paltrow. T--"
"Weinstein Couch" blows the coverlet off the sanctimonious Hollywooders and simply adds another swamp that will eventually be drained.
You can criticize Trump for his crudeness, his inarticulateness and his Tweeting outbursts but after he is long gone we will look back and realize how much impact he had in exposing D.C Swamp Hypocrisy, the mass media's bias and fake news, Hollywood, liberal's and progressive's PC'ism which we tolerated, which shaped our nation's character beginning with the '60's
I recently read a review of Justice Scalia's son's book: "Scalia Speaks." In the review of Scalia's speeches, I found constant reference to his most insightful recurring theme - the role civic and moral education plays in sustaining our republic.
As readers of my memos may remember, I once wrote about a birthday party I threw for myself when I turned 65. It involved a weekend on the Santa Fe Campus of St John's College, was attended by some of my closest friends and we discussed the role of what it meant to be a good citizen. We drew our readings, which formed our weekend discussion, from Washington's "Farewell Address," Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," "Federalist 10," "Ecclesiates" and other writings.
Our Republic is failing because we have allowed ourselves to drift away from the basic principles that form the glue that once bound us and that made us a special nation. You cannot look at kneeling footballers in isolation. It reveals a much larger story. You cannot ignore The Weinstein Cover Up without its connection to all that is wrong with our societal values which we ignore. You cannot accept Obama's appeasement policies he imposed on our nation regarding Iran without connecting it to the mess Trump inherited and what it says about the decline in American culture and attitude about patriotism. One cannot ignore the mounting deficits without asking what message this sends about our morality and the contempt we show towards our children. You cannot accept our border penetration without asking how little we must care about the value of American citizenship.
Looking the other way and denial by the elites is tolerated but eventually the truth comes out and when it does the shock among those who knew is even more appalling. Meryl Streep wold be perfect playing in the role of Hellen Keller.
The list of contemporary contempt for American values that made us great seems endless and frightening.(see 2 below.)
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Meanwhile, Israel prepares for war on northern borer. (See 3 below.)
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There are those Swampers who believe denying something is the approach Trump should take and they are the same ones who accuse him of lying. (See 4 and 4a below.)
Israel alerts U.S to Russian hackers. (See 4b below.)
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Dick
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1) An open letter to the NFL players,
You graduated high school in 2011. Your teenage years were a struggle. You grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Your mother was the leader of the family and worked tirelessly to keep a roof over your head and food on your plate. Academics were a struggle for you and your grades were mediocre at best. The only thing that made you stand out is you weighed 225 lbs and could run 40 yards in 4.2 seconds while carrying a football. Your best friend was just like you, except he didn’t play football. Instead of going to football practice after school, he went to work at McDonalds for minimum wage. You were recruited by all the big colleges and spent every weekend of your senior year making visits to universities where coaches and boosters tried to convince you their school was best. They laid out the red carpet for you. Your best friend worked double shifts at Mickey D’s. College was not an option for him. On the day you signed with Big State University, your best friend signed paperwork with his Army recruiter. You went to summer workouts. He went to basic training.
You spent the next four years living in the athletic dorm, eating at the training table. You spent your Saturdays on the football field, cheered on by adoring fans. Tutors attended to your every academic need. You attended class when you felt like it. Sure, you worked hard. You lifted weights, ran sprints, studied plays, and soon became one of the top football players in the country. Your best friend was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. While you were in college, he deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice. He became a Sergeant and led a squad of 19 year old soldiers who grew up just like he did. He shed his blood in Afghanistan and watched young American's give their lives, limbs, and innocence for the USA.
You went to the NFL combine and scored off the charts. You hired an agent and waited for draft day. You were drafted in the first round and your agent immediately went to work, ensuring that you received the most money possible. You signed for $16 million although you had never played a single down of professional football. Your best friend re-enlisted in the Army for four more years. As a combat tested sergeant, he will be paid $32,000 per year.
You will drive a Ferrari on the streets of South Beach. He will ride in the back of a Blackhawk helicopter with 10 other combat loaded soldiers. You will sleep at the Ritz. He will dig a hole in the ground and try to sleep. You will “make it rain” in the club. He will pray for rain as the temperature reaches 120 degrees.
On Sunday, you will run into a stadium as tens of thousands of fans cheer and yell your name. For your best friend, there is little difference betweenSunday and any other day of the week. There are no adoring fans. There are only people trying to kill him and his soldiers. Every now and then, he and his soldiers leave the front lines and “go to the rear” to rest. He might be lucky enough to catch an NFL game on TV. When the National Anthem plays and you take a knee, he will jump to his feet and salute the television. While you protest the unfairness of life in the United States, he will give thanks to God that he has the honor of defending his great country.
To the players of the NFL: We are the people who buy your tickets, watch you on TV, and wear your jerseys. We anxiously wait for Sundays so we can cheer for you and marvel at your athleticism. Although we love to watch you play, we care little about your opinions until you offend us. You have the absolute right to express yourselves, but we have the absolute right to boycott you. We have tolerated your drug use and DUIs, your domestic violence, and your vulgar displays of wealth. We should be ashamed for putting our admiration of your physical skills before what is morally right. But now you have gone too far. You have insulted our flag, our country, our soldiers, our police officers, and our veterans. You are living the American dream, yet you disparage our great country. I am done with NFL football and encourage all like minded Americans to boycott the NFL as well.
National boycott of the NFL for Sunday November 12th, Veterans Day Weekend. Boycott all football telecast, all fans, all ticket holders, stay away from attending any games, let them play to empty stadiums. Pass this post along to all your friends and family. Honor our military, some of whom come home with the American Flag draped over their coffin.
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2) Sanctimony Bites Weinstein Democrats
Maybe Hollywood progressives will tone down their self-righteousness.
Harvey Weinstein and Meryl Streep at the 2012 Australian Academy Of Cinema and Television Arts International
Awards in West Hollywood, Calif. PHOTO: JOHN SHEARER/WIREIMAGE
One of the few successes of John McCain’s 2008 campaign was a 30-second ad called
“Celeb.” It interspersed images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with Barack Obama
and his adoring crowds. A narrator said: “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world but is he
ready to lead?”
Pundits and political pros dismissed the spot as off-target and unconvincing. Mr. McCain
seemed almost embarrassed by it, claiming his campaign was just having “fun.”
Yet the implication that Mr. Obama was a glitzy Hollywood-style confection resonated
with voters. Mr. Obama, just coming off his ecstatic appearance in Berlin, saw his poll
numbers drop noticeably. His advisers were quoted in the press acknowledging the ad’s
power.
Which brings us to Harvey Weinstein. If Hollywood people are anything like normal
people, they should be nearly as offended by Mr. Weinstein’s presumptions about them
as they are by his alleged bullying of women for sex. Where does he get off assuming his
colleagues can be so easily manipulated, will so readily fall in line, just because he cites,
How can somebody with his smarts be so heavy-handed and obvious as to think he can
mint an instant pass for his transgressions merely by alluding to his opposition to the
National Rifle Association and President Trump ?
Then again, maybe we’re missing the real point. Mr. Weinstein was reminding liberal
elites that his trouble is their trouble, because they tolerated him for so long. That’s why
this scandal has legs.
He was a guest at the Obama White House 13 times. He gave hundreds of thousands to
the Clintons. In 2016, he hosted or headlined multiple fundraisers for Mrs. Clinton with
people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker.
He was coached by Team Clinton for a campaign appearance on CBS . In turn, he
coached campaign chief Robby Mook on how to answer the Bernie Sanders threat.
He’s also a man who the Los Angeles Times now tells us was “generally loathed” in
Hollywood. His sexual predations were so well known that they were the subject of a
joke on “30 Rock.” His behavior, we now learn, has been the subject of ongoing
reporting projects at the New Yorker, New York magazine and the New York Times,
which finally blew Mr. Weinstein out of the water with its 3,500-word account last week.
His offenses were the “biggest mess” Disney had to deal with during its 12-year
partnership with Mr. Weinstein, a former executive now tells the Times. Actresses
Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan, who related their stories to the paper, as well as Lena
Dunham, creator of HBO’s “Girls,” have been outspoken in the aftermath about Tinsel
Town’s history of covering up for Mr. Weinstein.
Then there is Meryl Streep, who worked closely with Mr. Weinstein, who sang his
praises at the Oscars. She claims never to have heard the unsavory stories. Her
denunciation of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged sins this week came not when the Times story
broke, not when Mr. Weinstein took a leave of absence from the company he created—
but only when his board (led by his brother) stuck a final fork in him by announcing his
firing.
OK, hypocrisy is a price we pay for civilization. Politicians and Hollywood types
especially are in the business of faking sincerity. Yet there is one thing about which the Hollywood-progressive nexus has been perfectly sincere: its conviction that its choice of
political party is a testament to its own shining personal virtue. The Democrats’ celebrity
enablers played a key role in fostering the inordinate self-righteousness of the modern
progressive movement, which has reached ad absurdum proportions lately with the
violent bullies of the Antifa movement.
The McCain “Celeb” ad, in retrospect, was a signpost. Last year the Democrats finally
offloaded a big chunk of working-class and middle-class America, many of whose
residents had been Obama voters. The Democrats became the concentrated party of
urban blue America, with urban blue America’s special susceptibility to the self-
celebritizing aspects of social media.
Republicans and conservatives were understandably delighted by Mr. Weinstein’s
ludicrous appeal to partisan solidarity in the midst of his sexual harassment extremis.
Maybe progressives would like to come up and watch him shower later?
Donald Trump, of course, has been guilty of offenses against feminism too, though
apparently not like Mr. Weinstein’s. Rather, the real connection is this: Liberal
hypocrites like Mr. Weinstein were a big reason 63 million Americans voted for a
conservative hypocrite like Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has his faults, but an excess of sanctimony isn’t one. Just maybe when the
Weinstein scandal has run its course, progressives will discover the virtue of toning
down their own excessive claims to righteousness.
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3) Israel concludes massive drill for war in north
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3) Israel concludes massive drill for war in north
The Israeli military wrapped up its largest drill in nearly two decades, with more than 25,000 active-duty and reserve forces taking part in an "extreme scenario" for war beyond its northern border.
A two-week drill of the Israel Defense Forces’ Northern Corps ― nearly a year in the making ― involved some 20 brigades, air power from all Israeli Air Force bases, the bulk of the Israeli Navy surface and submarine force, and more.
By: Barbara Opall-Rome
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2017/10/09/massive-drill-validates-israels-cyber-secure-c4i-network/
TEL AVIV, Israel ― After-action analysis from last month’s massive drill at Israel’s northern border has validated, with very few exceptions, more than a decade worth of development, deployment and operational procedures associated with the military’s cyber-secure, C4I-operational network, the military’s chief signal officer said.
“Our concept of fighting in the cyber domain was validated in the latest drill,” Brig. Gen. Netanel Cohen, the Israel Defense Forces‘ chief signal officer, told Defense News. “We took all the digital transformation of the past decade, and … bottom line: It worked.”
He was referring to last month’s drill of the IDF’s Northern Corps ― the largest in nearly 20 years ― designed to simulate extreme scenarios of war against Iran-armed and –trained Hezbollah forces beyond its northern border.
More than 25,000 active-duty and reserve forces from all service branches, combat disciplines and command echelons took part in the two-week drill, which involved cross-border infiltration, high-intensity ground maneuvering in urban areas, and sustained salvos of enemy rockets and missiles directed at the Israeli homefront.
Cohen also serves as chief of staff of the J6 C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate of the IDF General Staff with responsibility for developing, deploying, operating and defending C4I networks (command, control,. communications, computers and intelligence). In a recent interview, he said the drill marked the first opportunity for the IDF to test its multilayered, cloud-supported networks in such large numbers and across all combat and command echelons.
While Israel demonstrated many of the integrated C4I capabilities in Israel’s 2014 Gaza war ― particularly with regard to closing so-called sensor-to-shooter cycles by way of the networked operations ― the drill marked the first time the IDF could evaluate technologies, tactics and procedures on such a broad scale.
“It was the first time we managed to connect a broad portion of our order of battle and all fighting echelons deployed in the field on the same secure net,” Cohen said. “We validated that every ground-fighting platform had the ability to connect to the network.
“Battalion commanders got all the info they needed within their command post, and then they were able to take information that was relevant and push it to the company commander.”
Beyond command and control of targeting operations, Cohen said the drill validated IDF inroads in using organizational networks to manage logistics. It also provided an opportunity to demonstrate in-house-developed support clouds for the IDF High Command as well as a tactical cloud for maneuvering forces.
Going forward, the IDF plans to expand significantly on cloud-supported command, control and prosecution of war aims, he said.
“We have a maneuvering cloud that doesn’t stay back with the infrastructure; it all the time maneuvers with the forces. And within the battalion, the commander knows how much ammunition he has via an organizational network that allows him to more efficiently command his battalion,” Cohen said.
As for cyber defense, Cohen said the IDF’s C4I branch deployed a “red team” of crack hackers whose mission was to penetrate or otherwise contaminate the IDF’s operational network. “We had a full red team that challenged us immensely during the fog of war. It helped us validate with precision our strong points as well as our vulnerability points,” he said.
“There’s a lot we learned from the drill in terms of simultaneously operating with many networks and how to broaden capacity, which is our biggest challenge,” he added.
Cohen acknowledged that after-action assessments pointed to “some challenges with capacity and connectivity, where we needed to make patches here and there.” One of the skill sets demonstrated in the drill was the ability to conceive of ways to “working around” gaps revealed during the fight.
“We couldn’t have tested the system and learned the way we needed to learn without such a large-scale drill,” Cohen said.
4) "Iran Nuke Deal Should be Abrogated"
- Written by Alan Bergstein
Let's put our cards on the table.... right now. We at the New York Jewish Voice urge President Trump to dump the Obama-Iran Nuclear Deal. To support our stance, we'll use the exact words from one of its most initial, outspoken Senatorial opponents: "After deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote 'yes' on a motion of disapproval." Wow! Strong words from an elected Jewish leader. This guy continues: "I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path of diplomacy, it is because I believe Iran will not change and under the agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power." And these words, dear readers, are from our own NY Senator.......Chuck Schumer, when Obama and Kerry were hawking this deal to the nation from the back of a snake-oil wagon.
And let's listen to another heavy hitting Democrat opponent to the deal. This one is from House member Ted Deutch from South Florida, and how he felt about the deal when it was first presented by President Obama: "No one denies Iran's support for the world's most notorious terrorist groups. No one disputes Iran's destabilizing influence in the Middle Eat or in killing Americans. And because no one trusts Iran not to cheat in any way it can, the fact that this deal makes it nearly impossible to reinstate sanctions of today's intensity is beyond alarming. The unwarranted giveaways for Iran tucked inside this deal are also concerning. Lifting the arms embargo in five years lets Iran procure the sophisticated missile defense system they need to guard the nuclear weapons they want. And suspending the ballistic weapons ban after eight years allows Iran to develop the technology to deliver a weapon anywhere in the world."
"This deal may temporarily slow Iran's nuclear enrichment, but it speeds up the enrichment of the Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian terror proxies that endanger security and stability in the Middle East. Opening Iran up to foreign investment, increasing its oil exports and unfreezing over $100 billion in assets means more money for Hamas for building terror tunnels in Gaza, more weapons for Hezbollah in Lebanon, more slaughter in Syria and more violence worldwide. I cannot support a deal giving Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in return for letting it maintain an advanced nuclear program and the infrastructure of a threshold nuclear state."
These two top Democrats said it all before the deal was put through and we wonder why they have both reneged at this moment on their initial opposition now that President Trump wants to obliterate the deal using their very reasons for initially opposing it just a few years ago. Perhaps their reasoning is based not on the protection of their constituents from nuclear threats but rather on partisan politics. It beats us but we now can see the hypocrisy of the Progressive Left with their present support for Iran to join North Korea as a threat to the rest of the world, one that happens to be civilized.
4a) Why Should the President Pretend that Iran Is Complying with the Nuclear Agreement?
According to a report by the German government, Iranian agents made 32 illegal attempts in 2016 to purchase materials necessary for the country’s ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons programs; meanwhile, Tehran has not allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to carry out the inspections mandated by the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA). Thus, argues Abe Greenwald, there is little reason for the president to certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement by the October 15 deadline:
If Trump were not to decertify the deal, he would be lying about one of the gravest matters of American national security. He’d be declaring, against the testimony of the IAEA, that Iran is allowing for certain crucial inspections when, in fact, it’s not. The United States would become Iran’s duplicitous representative to international bodies.
Why do that? Well, the thinking goes, Iran has already received tens of billions of dollars as a result of the deal. Killing the deal wouldn’t help us recoup those losses; it would only further limit our ability to keep tabs on Iran. This is a compelling argument but only because there are always compelling reasons to let bad actors have their way. Those reasons boil down to the idea that confronting dangerous parties is riskier than appeasing them.
Is there a better deal to be had? I doubt it, but it could be worth trying. . . . [And] what if the JCPOA is dismantled and there’s no better deal to be had? . . . Iran wants to dictate to or destroy the United States or its allies by possessing a deliverable nuclear weapon. If that doesn’t warrant consideration of a bombing run, nothing does.It is this very thinking that has for decades guided our mistaken policy on Iran and North Korea. While institutional inertia ensures no change in bad American policy, the countries we try to deter strengthen their hands and become effectively undeterrable. That’s how the world’s worst problems—North Korea’s nuclear program, for example—become unsolvable. . .
4b)Report: Israel caught Russian hackers, alerted US to intelligence theft attempts
By JOY BERNARD
|
Spies spying on spies: while Russian hackers were spying on the US, Israeli hackers were keeping close tabs on them. Israel tipped off the US to a broad Russian hacking attempt, first revealed two years ago, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
In 2015, Russian government hackers scoured computers across the world to try to reach American intelligence programs, but they were not aware that Israeli intelligence officers were tracking their activity and eventually brought it to the knowledge of the US, who then put the dangerous hacking attempt to a halt.
The Russian hackers, the Times report explained, used an antivirus software operated by a company called Kaspersky Lab that is broadly utilized by some 400 million people worldwide (including by officials at American government agencies).
According to the Times, the Russian hackers used the software to steal classified documents from a National Security Agency employee who was using the software on his home computer. They also turned the software into a type of search engine, but the extent of the activity they pursued by doing that has still not been revealed.
Last month, the US government decided to remove the Kaspersky software from all government computers as a result of the Israeli reveal that the Russian espionage attempt was underway.
A previous report on the Russian use of the software to steal classified N.S.A materials from an employee who used the software inappropriately on his home computer was released by The Wall Street Journal last week, but did not reveal Israel's integral role in preventing the Russian hackers from getting their hands on further sensitive information.
The Russian hackers were reportedly unaware that Israel was keeping tabs on their activity until mid-2015, at which point an engineer with Kaspersky who tested a new detection tool was made aware of unusual activity in the network, leading to an investigation by the company that concluded with a report released in 2015 and available to the public.
The report didn't point at Israel as the country that hacked into the software, but noted that the hack was reminiscent of a previous attack identified as "Duqu," which was attributed to the same countries behind the Stuxnet cyberweapon.
Stuxnet, spearheaded in an Israel-US collaboration, infilitrated Iran Natanz nuclear facility in 2010 and destroyed a fifth of Iran's uranium centrifuges, according to foreign reports.
Kaspersky dubbed this attack as "Duqu 2.0," and pointed out that others who were attacked in the same way were ideal Israeli targets.
According to the Times, Kaspersky investigators realized that Israeli hackers used especially sophisticated tools to infiltrate the system, stealing passwords, erasing emails and documents and taking screenshots.
The Jerusalem Post first reported of Kaspersky's suspicions in 2015, when the cybersecurity firm noted that there were breaches in its software at three luxury European hotels from a virus considered a hallmark of Israeli intelligence operations. Kaspersky's investigation then led to the discovery that all three hotels hosted talks between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program in the past year.
According to the company's report, Kaspersky crosschecked thousands of hotels in search of similar breaches. It found only three. The firm declined to name those hotels, but the negotiations have been held in only six hotels in Switzerland and Austria since the diplomatic effort first began.
Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told The Jerusalem Post at the time that the hack was not limited to the hotels and that "up to 100" targets were subjected to the attack.
“It’s important to know that Kaspersky Lab products identified the infection within various victims," Baumgartner said. "In addition to several unknown victims, we are quite sure that at least three of the venues where P5+1 talks about a nuclear deal with Iran were held have been attacked."
Speaking to the Times, representatives of Kaspersky Lab denied that they were aware or implicit in the Russian hacking. "Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts,” the company said Tuesday. Kaspersky Lab also added that it “respectfully requests any relevant, verifiable information that would enable the company to begin an investigation at the earliest opportunity.”
Israeli intelligence officers reached out to the N.S.A to inform the agency that while hacking into the Kaspersky software they learned that Russian government hackers were using the system to scan American government classified programs and take findings back to Russian intelligence systems. The Times report said that Israeli officials provided evidence for their findings, showing N.S.A counterparts evidence in the form of screenshots and other documents.
And while Israel intruded the Kaspersky software in 2014, only in September did the Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal executive branch agencies to stop using Kaspersky products within 90 days.
The National Security Agency, the White House, the Israeli Embassy and the Russian Embassy all declined to comment on the Times report.
Michael Wilner contributed to this report.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++In 2015, Russian government hackers scoured computers across the world to try to reach American intelligence programs, but they were not aware that Israeli intelligence officers were tracking their activity and eventually brought it to the knowledge of the US, who then put the dangerous hacking attempt to a halt.
The Russian hackers, the Times report explained, used an antivirus software operated by a company called Kaspersky Lab that is broadly utilized by some 400 million people worldwide (including by officials at American government agencies).
According to the Times, the Russian hackers used the software to steal classified documents from a National Security Agency employee who was using the software on his home computer. They also turned the software into a type of search engine, but the extent of the activity they pursued by doing that has still not been revealed.
Last month, the US government decided to remove the Kaspersky software from all government computers as a result of the Israeli reveal that the Russian espionage attempt was underway.
A previous report on the Russian use of the software to steal classified N.S.A materials from an employee who used the software inappropriately on his home computer was released by The Wall Street Journal last week, but did not reveal Israel's integral role in preventing the Russian hackers from getting their hands on further sensitive information.
The Russian hackers were reportedly unaware that Israel was keeping tabs on their activity until mid-2015, at which point an engineer with Kaspersky who tested a new detection tool was made aware of unusual activity in the network, leading to an investigation by the company that concluded with a report released in 2015 and available to the public.
The report didn't point at Israel as the country that hacked into the software, but noted that the hack was reminiscent of a previous attack identified as "Duqu," which was attributed to the same countries behind the Stuxnet cyberweapon.
Stuxnet, spearheaded in an Israel-US collaboration, infilitrated Iran Natanz nuclear facility in 2010 and destroyed a fifth of Iran's uranium centrifuges, according to foreign reports.
Kaspersky dubbed this attack as "Duqu 2.0," and pointed out that others who were attacked in the same way were ideal Israeli targets.
According to the Times, Kaspersky investigators realized that Israeli hackers used especially sophisticated tools to infiltrate the system, stealing passwords, erasing emails and documents and taking screenshots.
The Jerusalem Post first reported of Kaspersky's suspicions in 2015, when the cybersecurity firm noted that there were breaches in its software at three luxury European hotels from a virus considered a hallmark of Israeli intelligence operations. Kaspersky's investigation then led to the discovery that all three hotels hosted talks between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program in the past year.
According to the company's report, Kaspersky crosschecked thousands of hotels in search of similar breaches. It found only three. The firm declined to name those hotels, but the negotiations have been held in only six hotels in Switzerland and Austria since the diplomatic effort first began.
Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told The Jerusalem Post at the time that the hack was not limited to the hotels and that "up to 100" targets were subjected to the attack.
“It’s important to know that Kaspersky Lab products identified the infection within various victims," Baumgartner said. "In addition to several unknown victims, we are quite sure that at least three of the venues where P5+1 talks about a nuclear deal with Iran were held have been attacked."
Speaking to the Times, representatives of Kaspersky Lab denied that they were aware or implicit in the Russian hacking. "Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts,” the company said Tuesday. Kaspersky Lab also added that it “respectfully requests any relevant, verifiable information that would enable the company to begin an investigation at the earliest opportunity.”
Israeli intelligence officers reached out to the N.S.A to inform the agency that while hacking into the Kaspersky software they learned that Russian government hackers were using the system to scan American government classified programs and take findings back to Russian intelligence systems. The Times report said that Israeli officials provided evidence for their findings, showing N.S.A counterparts evidence in the form of screenshots and other documents.
And while Israel intruded the Kaspersky software in 2014, only in September did the Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal executive branch agencies to stop using Kaspersky products within 90 days.
The National Security Agency, the White House, the Israeli Embassy and the Russian Embassy all declined to comment on the Times report.
Michael Wilner contributed to this report.
