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US Government Weighing Sanctions Against Kaspersky Lab (cyberscoop.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the retaliatory-actions dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CyberScoop: The U.S. government is considering sanctions against Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab as part of a wider round of action carried out against the Russian government, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter. The sanctions would be a considerable expansion and escalation of the U.S. government's actions against the company. Kaspersky, which has two ongoing lawsuits against the U.S. government, has been called "an unacceptable threat to national security" by numerous U.S. officials and lawmakers.

Officials told CyberScoop any additional action against Kaspersky would occur at the lawsuits' conclusion, which Kaspersky filed in response to a stipulation in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that bans its products from federal government networks. If the sanctions came to fruition, the company would be barred from operating in the U.S. and potentially even in U.S. allied countries.

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. For working on by AHuxley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    Stuxnet
    Flame
    Equation Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    Android cyber-espionage used by 60 governments.

    The internet needs all the security it can get. Why would the US not want quality global security research?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:For working on by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would the US not want quality global security research?

      Because Kasperky could detect the next US-government-sponsored malware. The other malware companies can be "convinced" to play nice.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  2. The Agenda by AlanObject · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It really seems to me that someone or someones high up in the U.S. govt really has it in for Kasperskey. Is that just my impression or does anyone else feel that way?

    I would think that if the company actually had any malware in their security products it would have been detected by now. At the end of the day if they were doing Bad Guy Stuff then it would have to write Bad Guy Stuff either to local storage or onto the wire even if it is encrypted. There are a number of automated tools for detecting this both in a simulated environment (VM) and on real hardware.

    Has there been any revealing of this kind of behavior that I missed? If not this seems like an awful lot of punishment in the absence of any crime.

    So what's the motive here?