By: Keith Hallman | July 3rd, 2017
If you are an Anti-virus company based in Moscow, Russia and you are consistently at the top of the charts for protection against viruses/malware/spying, then the Senate + FBI can open a special committee (a team of prosecutors and intelligence officials + senators) to investigate you without any evidence!?!? I think it is more likely that Kaspersky is refusing to give the CIA/NSA/FBI a backdoor into their firewall like Apple and many others have, far more than the FBI having any actual dirt on Kaspersky in this “secret report”. Or this is push back on the fact that Kaspersky filed suit against Microsoft only weeks before this occurred. In the lawsuit, Kaspersky claims Microsoft has monopolized the A/V service by providing their own service for free and Kaspersky says the notification system for their own software is minimal over renewing licenses. Once Kaspersky expires, Microsoft’s own services kick in on some computers.
I have personally been using and recommending Kaspersky since around 2003 and that includes US government computers where I worked at a government branch consisting of 500-600 PCs/laptops from 2006-2009. It used to be a selling point of the software that the CEO was a former KGB employee and thus had inside knowledge & connections on how to stop spying/data collection/malware/viruses. Mainly their firewall and smart live monitoring which will block anyone attempting to connect, script or human.
This story alone will most likely bankrupt Kaspersky due to everyone believing everything that our Senate/FBI wants to investigate and thus fleeing the service. Then Kaspersky will probably sue for killing the company without even having a shred of evidence. We can’t always have every top company in every field we use based in the US, to me this seems very shady. Also shouldn’t it be the CIA or NSA who is doing this and not the FBI since none of this is based in the US? I bet you that has to do with the Senate getting involved.
“ABC said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a secret report on the matter in February and that the FBI was investigating Kaspersky Lab’s relationship to the Russian government, citing unnamed sources.
Reuters was not able to verify the claims, which Kaspersky Lab denied in a statement: “As a private company, Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts.””