US 'Orchestrated' Russian Spies Scandal, Says Kaspersky Founder (theguardian.com)

Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian: Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive and co-founder of the embattled Russian cybersecurity firm that bears his name, believes his company is at the centre of a "designed and orchestrated attack" to destroy its reputation. Over a short period in the summer of 2017, Kaspersky Labs was the subject of multiple media reports alleging that the company had helped Russian intelligence agencies spy on the US, a number of FBI raids on staff members, and a nationwide ban on the use of its software by federal government agencies. "This media attack and government attack from the United States, it was designed and orchestrated," Mr Kaspersky said at a press conference in London. "Because at the same time, there was government, there was FBI, there was media attack. That is expensive ... I mean all kinds of resources: political influence, money, lobbyists, the media etc." When asked directly whether he had ever been asked to help Russian intelligence agencies spy on the US, Kaspersky vehemently denied any such conversations had ever happened saying: "They have never asked us to spy on people. Never." "If the Russian government comes to me and asks me to do anything wrong, I will move the business out of Russia," he added. "We never helped the espionage agencies, the Russians or any other nation."

Comments

Kapersky admitted they downloaded the files

[the_skywise]

He not only admitted he downloaded the files, he said he was PROUD that he had downloaded the files as they furthered the investigation into malware.
The files then somehow made their way to the KGB.
Since then he's said that there was a trojan on the PC he got the files from (but the trojan infection wasn't their fault because the PC user had turned off Kapersky for awhile which they also knew) so Russian hackers must've gotten the information that way
Now he's saying it's a giant conspiracy?
He doesn't have to actively work with the Russian government - they could easily have moles in his organization pulling the data out.

We have now reached Level 3

[cahuenga]

Throwing rationales at the wall to see if any will stick.

Re:We have now reached Level 3

[Anonymous Coward]

have you considered that perhaps he could be telling the truth?
If I recall correctly, a few months before all these Kaspersky stories started coming out, there was some story about the US not being successful in getting foreign companies to whitelist their malware or something like that. Kaspersky has always had a reputation for being against whitelisting government malware.
The whole series of stories stinks of a retaliatory seek and destroy campaign. It wouldn't be the government's first either - just ask Joe Nacchio.

This whole story is stupid - Kaspersky detects government malware and downloads it for analysis (normal desired default behavior). Then, since every government on the planet has a compulsive need to read every communication and hack every computer attached to the internet, the info somehow gets to the FSB. Somehow people want to interpret this as "Kaspersky is evil" instead of "if you don't want your brand new shiney malware to leak out, don't don't upload it to AV servers for analysis".

Excessive revenge for Snowden's asylum conntinues

[Max_W]

Edward Snowden's asylum would continue to cost Russian companies dearly.

What the US bureaucrats do not understand is that a president of Russia is not like a sultan. Russian people are hard to rule to a degree that the leadership cannot do whatever it wants. They have to listen to the public opinion.

In my opinion, it was impossible to extradite Edward Snowden. They were just unable to to it due to the public opinion. I think the US has to forget Snowden as if he did not exist. You cannot win them all.

Re:Credibility Nada.

[phayes]

Snort, transparent russian self-justifications for murder, rapine and plunder. You forgot to claim that the Ukrainian Government shot down MK17 & how Litveneko was poisoned by the CIA.

Go back to reading/writing RT.