Kaspersky anti-virus software in the crosshairs

Yes, the Russian-owned Kaspersky anti-virus software is indeed in the crosshairs of U.S.-Russian intelligence tit-for-tat. This explains why U.S. Federal agencies have only three months to begin removing all products from the Russian firm Kaspersky Labs from all U.S. government computer systems. This directive came from the U.S. Homeland Security Department last week Wednesday. The directive comes after a month-long campaign by top U.S. government security officials highlighting the Moscow-based firm’s possible Kremlin ties. Moreover, two months ago, the U.S. General Services Administration removed Kaspersky products from its schedule of pre-approved vendors. A major defense policy bill that was debated on the floor of the U.S. senate last week would similarly ban Kaspersky products from U.S. defense systems.

Before now, strange as it might sound - given the usual rift between the two nations involved - the use of Kaspersky to protect U.S. government computer systems has been widespread. Since a decade or so ago, Kaspersky has been used in Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Treasury Department, the National Institutes of Health and U.S. embassies, among other locations. It is also a staple for protecting state, local and tribal government computers, and perhaps in some more sensitive, but non-national security, systems at the U.S. Homeland Security Department. As you can imagine, anti-virus software systems are able to access, monitor, and modify the computer systems they protect. They are able to communicate quite easily with the servers of the company that owns them. (Those servers are in Moscow, in the case of Kaspersky.) Thus, the use of anti-virus software as spying tools is quite potent.

It’s no news that some trust has been lost between the U.S. and Russia following the former’s 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have officially concluded that the Russian government hacked their Democratic Party and released stolen emails to the public in an effort to bias the 2016 presidential election toward then Candidate Donald Trump and away from his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. Some U.S. law makers are also concerned about the presence of Kaspersky software on U.S. election computer systems and other critical infrastructure, such as airports and energy plants. Russian belligerence in Ukraine and its aid to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad are also to the discontent of the U.S.

A motivation for the ban on Kaspersky is to mitigate the risk to the U.S. that the Russian government could capitalize - if it has not already done so - on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise U.S. information and information systems, thereby directly affecting U.S. national security. After all, as is suspected, under Russian law, companies such as Kaspersky must “collaborate” with the Russia’s main intelligence agencies!

Kaspersky is respected for its technical capabilities, and its software, which is believed to be reasonably effective in general; and particularly effective against cybercrime organizations operating out of Eastern Europe; is typically cheaper than other major anti-virus software products. As expected, the company vehemently denies any collusion with the Russian government in spying against the U.S. It says it has no ties to “any government,” and has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts. The company also denied sharing any customer data with the Russian government. On the other hand, the company’s CEO and co-founder Eugene Kaspersky suggests that the concerns about his product are “political,” based on broader tension between the U.S. and Russia, and he is expressing the willingness of his company to testify publicly before the U.S. Senate to allay any fears. Mr. Kaspersky is also of the rather incredible opinion that “highly technically capable nations such as Russia don’t need the help of private companies to conduct digital surveillance and that it would be unfeasible to force such cooperation.”

Okay, but whose side is Kaspersky truly on anyway: Russia or the U.S.? I can’t be categorical, but circumstantial evidence seems to abound. Mr. Kaspersky has acknowledged serving as an intelligence officer in the Soviet military and studying computer science and cryptography at a KGB-funded institute. (KGB is the Russian equivalent of U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.) In the recent past, Kaspersky, the company, has also acted in ways that do not praise the US government. For example, the company exposed hacking campaigns by highly advanced groups that were supposedly affiliated with U.S. intelligence agencies. For example, Kaspersky chronicled, in a 44-page report published in February 2015, the activities of the Equation Group, which was claimed to be an advanced persistent threat group that was likely tied to the US National Security Agency (NSA).