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

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: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.