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According to emails from October 2009 obtained by Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley at Bloomberg it appears that Kaspersky Lab has been working with Russian Intelligence. Despite long standing rumours over these connections Eugene Kaspersky has always denied this to be the case, including as recently as last week in response to questions in the US Senate by Florida Republican Marco Rubio when he stated that "Claims about Kaspersky Lab's ties to the Kremlin are "unfounded conspiracy theories" and "total BS,"" on Reddit, and even offering to hand over the source code to the US Government for inspection.
While the exact nature of the co-operation with the FSB is still unclear, in the emails Kaspersky outlines a project undertaken in secret a year earlier "per a big request on the Lubyanka side," a reference to the FSB offices, that "includes both technology to protect against attacks (filters) as well as interaction with the hosters ('spreading' of sacrifice) and active countermeasures (about which, we keep quiet) and so on," Kaspersky wrote in one of the emails. Kaspersky Lab has confirmed that the emails are authentic. Whether this was legitimate work with the FSB in the prevention of cybercrime or securing FSB facilities or something more nefarious, it seems likely that this is not going to alleviate concerns over the use of their software putting further pressure on Kaspersky's business in other countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:37AM (1 child)
One might say it takes an even bigger partisan to rewrite history to justify unfounded conspiracy theories.
Here [go.com] is what the news media was reporting: In particular, current and former U.S. officials fear Kaspersky Lab products have the potential to facilitate Russian cyberattacks on power grids or other key utilities. “That is something I have followed for a long time and have significant concerns about,” former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Liz Sherwood-Randall said.
This is why Kaspersky immediately offered to allow complete source code access. The allegations, which genuinely can be labeled conspiracy theories, had no justification in reality whatsoever. Since it seems the investigation into such allegation has generated exactly 0 evidence, we've now dramatically shifted the goal posts to Kaspersky is providing cybersecurity solutions for the Russian government. Which not only has nothing to do with what was first alleged, but is also in no way a secret or an untoward activity. It's like alleging that Microsoft is part of PRISM [wikipedia.org] in a parallel dimension which they weren't, and then upon discovering this - shifting the goal posts to Microsoft providing operating system software to US intelligence agencies which is a non-issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:48PM
Probably true, but the source can be clean, and the binaries not if the compiler is designed to inject the malicious code. So they would also need to provide source for the compiler as well, unless known clean copies of it can be obtained from a trusted source.