Your antivirus could be spyware

We think that having antivirus keeps us safe and it does. Little do we think that it can be used for malicious intent.

Israeli spies hacked into Kaspersky’s backend systems only to find Russian snoops secretly and silently using the software as a global search engine.

All your files could potentially be searchable. Avoid cloud services would not be a saving grace.

Kaspersky’s code, installed on millions of computers around the planet, was being used as a global searchable spying tool by the Russian government, it is alleged.

What could be done?

It is important to realize that once something becomes digital it is only a matter of time before it can be found and shared. Keep information either verbal or on paper if you want to minimize risk. Keeping content digital is not always practical.

In those cases, it makes sense to have a computer that never connects to the Internet. Furthermore, data transfers must have with read only medium, e.g., CD/DVD. Lastly, the disk drive should be encrypted with a very strong passphrase.

If you had Kaspersky installed on your non-connected laptop and transferred the antivirus definitions via CD, the likelihood of a data leak becomes very low.

The entire story

Want to learn more about cybersecurity?

Follow me on Medium and Amazon Kindle.

Before you go

About the author

Originally published on Medium.com

Photo by Tim Mielke on Unsplash