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

hmmm

[nomadic]

While I'm not sure whether I'd use Kaspersky before, paranoia on the part of its founder is not assuaging my concerns over it.

Re:hmmm

[Megol]

So they should not say anything even though there is a government backed conspiracy (a legal one) to smear the name of Kaspersky? This without any evidence at all?

You perhaps should readjust your brain.

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.

Re:Kapersky admitted they downloaded the files

[Psion]

The files then somehow made their way to the KGB? Uh ... wasn't the KGB dissolved in 1991?

Re:Kapersky admitted they downloaded the files

[tinkerton]

Beg your pardon. If the US intelligence agencies decided that Kaspersky was getting in their way then this is the response I'd expect, The claims about collaborations with the Russian government are just a way to dress it up. The Israelis weren't hacking Kaspersky because they suspected russian involvement. They were trying to get in because Kaspersky was doing a good job. And they got thrown out, after leaving the US state of the art tools behind.

Re:Kapersky admitted they downloaded the files

[Kazoo the Clown]

Perhaps Kaspersky's software has been a bit too effective at blocking NSA malware...

Credibility Nada.

[phayes]

"If the Russian government comes to me and asks me to do anything wrong, I will move the business out of Russia."

Putin has invaded both Georgia & the Ukraine and executed a former ally in London with radioactive poison. Yet Kaspersky expects us to believe that he could just pick up roots and move his company out of Russia? The credibility stretching involved to be able to believe that is bigger than the sun.

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.

Re:Credibility Nada.

[phayes]

Oh look! _Another_ putin-bot spouting the same feces as the last one.

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. Or better yet, sleep around as much as you can, now that the KGB lie that AIDS virus is a myth has caught fire in russia & new infection rates are exploding, karma may come your way.

Re:Credibility Nada.

[phayes]

And the whataboutist Uberbah shill makes it’s apparition with self pronouncements of papal indisputability

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".

Re:We have now reached Level 3

[hey!]

I think what he says is plausible. I think it's also plausible that Kapersky did favors for the FSB. The question is which is more plausible. They could both be true.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't trust any vendor entirely, especially ones with known ties to state security agencies. It's quite reasonable for US defense and intelligence contractors to avoid Russian products, and it would be just as reasonable for Russian firms to avoid American products.

You have to do a threat assessment. If you're involved with national security, then vendor connections to a hostile government are a red flag. If you're a commercial company, connections to foreign governments that are known to do industrial espionage are a red flag.

Re:How do you know when a Russian is lying?

[XXongo]

When their mouths are moving!

Actually, they use ventriloquism a lot, so even that isn't a good sign.

Speaking through ventriloquist's dummies is their most common trick

paying off media is not hard

[Imazalil]

'Teh media' (especially ones that operates a television channel) will jump at any chance to get a story out first. That means lots of 'developing' and 'stay tuned for details' and not any of 'fact checking' and 'research'. This does not cost any money.

Seems that everyone, be they Republican, Democrat, or Russian based anti-virus vendors forget this.

-- Still not sure if he's covering up the fact that Kapersky is working with the Russian gov. or that they're just not so good at protecting computers from malware/hacking. I'd put some money on that they were infiltrated by the FSB without their knowledge - again, not a good look for a security company.

Re:paying off media is not hard

[Baron_Yam]

> I'd put some money on that they were infiltrated by the FSB without their knowledge - again, not a good look for a security company

When a major state intelligence agency (it's not just Russia!) wants your data badly enough... they're going to get your data. After that, it's a matter of if people find out and what the state does to prevent that from happening.

The story of 'user had files, user had infection, user used our software which scanned for, found, and uploaded the infected files to us as designed' seems extremely reasonable to me. That same sequence of events could play out with any other AV vendor, since that's how AV software works.

Covering up that it had happened? Perhaps that's understandable when you're realize you're up against the state security apparatus, but it's not acceptable regardless. And we should not forget that they DID try to cover it up and pretend it never happened.

Re:Of course he would say this

[Anonymous Coward]

Would have been nice to have seen some real evidence and not speculation when the U.S. government was ruining Kaspersky's reputation

Re:Of course he would say this

[Narcocide]

I'd like to see proof that it couldn't have happened without his knowledge if they simply asked one of his employees instead, or that he could have even stopped it if he knew.

Re:Ka[s]persky admitted they downloaded the files

[SlaveToTheGrind]

The files then somehow made their way to the KGB.

And we know that particular rendition of those bits came from Kaspersky how?

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 Ka[s]persky for awhile which they also knew) so Russian hackers must've gotten the information that way

And he extensively documented the reasons why he believes that to be the case. On the other side as far as I can tell, we basically have "Kaspersky and the KGB both ended up with copies of files and are both in Russia... oooooo."

Kaspersky didn't necessarily have to do anything

[SB5407]

For what it's worth: Kaspersky didn't necessarily have to do anything for the Russians to take advantage of their apparatus. The NSA in the US has tapped into many different systems and apparatuses without the system maker's cooperation. See: the TAO catalog.

who tapped Angela Merkel's personal cell phone?

[Uberbah]

Not Putin.

All the Russia hysteria over the last few years has been straight-up Swiftboating. Fucking with other countries and wanting to spy on every person on the planet is what the United States does on a daily basis, so naturally it accuses someone else of doing what they do. If Kaspersky is proven to bend over backwards to help the FSB the same way American companies do for the CIA/NSA/FBI, then we can have a conversation, but so far the accusations have as much evidence to back them up as the conspiracy theory that Russia 'hacked the election' last year (i.e. none, nada, zip. zilch).

Karl Rove must be collecting some sweet royalties on this tactic.

Re:We need pretext to split the net.

[ilguido]

Being the timely "annexation" of Crimea when Ukraine was in discussion of joining the EU

Uff, the annexation of Crimea by Russia was made possible by many stupid decisions of the "revolutionary" parliament of Ukraine, that passed a bill to remove the Russian language (and other minority languages) from the list of the official regional languages, while there are regions of Ukraine where a large part (or even the majority) of the population identify themselves as Russian (or some other minority). That was one of the reason of the counter-revolution in Ukraine, that was then exploited by Russia.

the invasion of Georgia

Same situation. Saakashvili, then president of Georgia, tried to deflect the attention from his own failures as a politician by militarily occupying South Ossetia, which was an autonomous region of Georgia under the control of a peace keeping force monitored by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Again, Russia exploited the situation "helping" South Ossetia, but you can say that Saakashvili had it coming.

Then we have proof that Russia has created Facebook groups creating dueling protests to reinforce Americans divides and stresses, there is a problem with racism in the US, so they bring up fake news or exaggerated news to play on these feelings of uncomfortable and turn it to fear.

Don't be naive, not just Russia. What about Saudi Arabia? Qatar? Israel? Corporations? The American government? They are all investing in the fake news business, and they are all, singularly, investing much more than Russia. The sum of their investments dwarfs the Russian investments. If you somewhat fear Russian fake news, you should accordingly be scared to death by your establishment fake news.

Re:We need pretext to split the net.

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

You seem Russian as those are Russian type explanations. First of all, the Russian language has been de-emphasized ever since Ukraine gained independence. While there was some stupid law like you mention, the reality is that Ukrainian education has been in Ukrainian, not Russian, for a very long time now. I remember over a decade ago meeting a lady who taught in what the US would call elementary school and she was an ethnic Russian, but she told me that she was required by law to teach in Ukrainian. Please note that she lived in a town currently under rebel control in East Ukraine where most people speak Russian by choice. Crimea has always had a chip on its shoulder about being given by Krushchev to Ukraine and Russia exploited this. The law change is just an excuse. They've been looking for a reason to go back to Russia for a very long time and the instability in the national government provided the pretext Putin needed to "liberate" them. And that liberation was really mostly to get control of the naval bases there. I have known for a very long time that Ukraine allowing Russians to keep ships there was a really bad idea, but government after government foolishly believed that they could pacify Mother Russia by doing so and she wouldn't attack them.

Do note that this so-called "peace keeping force monitored by the OSCE" is only Russian and other nations are not allowed to participate. The OCSE monitoring is theoretical at best. Your reason stated for Saakhasvili's invasion is correct, but note that you are forgetting to mention that Russian troops went there to "help" (wink wink) during a previous ethnic clash over a decade earlier and never left.

Then we have the usual "Don't single out Russia. Everybody else is doing it and doing it more!" argument. You lose on that one.

Re:Of course he would say this

[r1348]

The burden of proof lies on the accuser.

Re:We need pretext to split the net.

[r1348]

Crimea is where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based.

Re: We need pretext to split the net.

[r1348]

Ok, stop giving money and fuck off. Deal?

Re:We need pretext to split the net.

[r1348]

Coincidentally, Saakashvili is now the Governor of Odessa, Ukraine. Quite clear who's pulling his strings at this point.