12 hours ago Feb. 1, 2014 - 2:24 AM PST<\/p>\n
Belgiums federal prosecutor is looking into the likely hacking of noted cryptographer Jean-Jacques Quisquater by the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ, as first reported on Saturday morning by De Standaard. <\/p>\n
Quisquaters targeting became apparent during the investigation into the hacking of telecoms firm Belgacom, shown by Edward Snowdens leaks to be the work of GCHQ. <\/p>\n
As in that case, the Universit catholique de Louvain professor apparently fell victim to a quantum insert trick that duped him into thinking he was visiting LinkedIn to respond to an emailed request when he was actually visiting a malware-laden copy of a LinkedIn page. <\/p>\n
The Belgian federal police (FCCU) sent me a warning about this attack and did the analysis, Quisquater told me by email. As for the purpose of the hack: We dont know. There are many hypotheses (about 12 or 15) but it is certainly an industrial espionage plus a surveillance of people working about civilian cryptography. <\/p>\n
Quisquater, who holds 17 patents and is particularly noted for his work on payment security, also said the attack was related to a variant of MiniDuke, an exploit that quietly puts backdoors into the targets system. <\/p>\n
Whatever the precise motive, on the face of it Quisquater is very much a civilian target a professor emeritus, not a spy, a terrorist nor a member of government. It would be difficult for any intelligence agency to claim that stealing information from him is a matter of crucial national interest. The aftermath of this revelation will be worth watching. <\/p>\n
This article was updated at 9am PT to include Quisquaters quotes and again at 9.50am PT to include comment. <\/p>\n
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