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UK and US spy agencies targeted Russian and Chinese anti-virus firms: Snowden leaks
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American and British spy agencies tried to break into popular anti-virus and computer security software to infiltrate networks and track users, according to documents leaked by former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
New documents released by The Intercept illustrate how the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), spied on the makers of the software and sought to reverse engineer and bypass their products.
The Intercept is a media platform co-founded by journalist Glenn Greenwald to report on the documents leaked by Snowden. Greenwald had been one of the journalists who first revealed Snowden’s material.
According to The Intercept, firms targeted included Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, Czech makers Avast and AVG and Chinese firm Antiy. Between them, the companies have almost a billion users.
Founded in Harbin in 2000, Antiy is a relatively small firm which focuses on mobile security, with around 10 million users worldwide. The revelations that Chinese firms were targeted by US spies will come as an embarrassment ahead of President Barack Obama's summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the US in September.
Neither leading American anti-virus makers McAfee and Symantec nor UK firm Sophos were targeted, according to the documents.
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