Turns Out Kaspersky Labs Helped FBI Catch Alleged NSA Leaker

Remember “The Shadow Brokers”
and the arrest of a former NSA contractor accused of stealing 50
Terabytes of top secret documents from the intelligence agency?

It turns out that, Kaspersky Lab, which has been banned in US
government computers over spying fears, was the one who tipped off
the U.S. government and helped the FBI catch NSA
contractor Harold T. Martin III^[2], unnamed sources
familiar with the investigation told Politico.

In October 2016, the U.S. government arrested and charged
Martin, 51, with theft of highly classified documents, including
most sensitive NSA hacking
tools and top-secret information about “national defense,” that
he siphoned from government computers over the period of two
decades.
^[3][4]

The breach is believed to be the largest heist of classified
government material in America’s history, far bigger than Edward Snowden
leaks.

According to the sources, the Antivirus firm learned about
Martin after he sent unusual direct messages via Twitter to its two
researchers in 2016, just 30 minutes before the Shadow Brokers
hacking group began leaking classified NSA hacking tools on the
Internet.

The timing of the Twitter messages, the Shadow Brokers leaks, and
other clues like HAL999999999 Twitter profile linked to Martin and
Martin access to the NSA’s elite hacking unit, immediately
triggered a red flag at Kaspersky, who then reported the
communication to the NSA.
However, it should be noted that Martin, who is set to go on trial
in June, is currently facing 20 counts of unauthorized and willful
retention of national defense information, and the FBI doesn’t have
any evidence to link him with the Shadow Brokers.

By the way, don’t confuse the Martin case with the case of
Nghia Hoang
Pho^[7], 67, a developer for the
the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations Division who was sentenced to 5.5
years in prison^[8]
last year to illegally taking classified documents home, which were
later stolen by Russian hackers from his home PC that was running
Kaspersky antivirus.

In the Pho’s case, the U.S. government accused Kaspersky Lab of
colluding with the
Russian intelligence^[9]
agency to obtain and expose the classified NSA data from the NSA
employee’s computer.

Ironically, Martin was arrested at a time when the FBI was
engaged in an aggressive campaign against Kaspersky Labs to
discredit it and get its software banned from US federal computers
for the sake of national security.

Even though Kaspersky Lab vigorously and
repeatedly denied^[10] these accusations^[11], its software and
services was banned for government use by a law signed by President
Donald Trump in December of 2017 and later by the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) over spying fears.

At the time of his arrest in August 2016, Martin worked for Booz
Allen Hamilton Holding Corp, the same company previously employed
Edward
Snowden^[12] who also leaked
classified documents in 2013 that exposed secret surveillance
programs carried out by the NSA.

^[1][5]