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Full Title: U.S. bans use of Kaspersky software in federal agencies amid concerns of Russian espionage
The fear here is that being a Russian company, Kaspersky Labs is legally bound to comply with Russian laws ... draconian laws that basically require Russian internet/telecommunication companies to fully cooperate with Russian security services and that the security services have unlimited access to all requested information/data. It is also conjectured that Kaspersky has unofficially tested the stealth attributes/capabilities of Russian-state hacker-modules.
By Ellen Nakashima and Jack Gillum
September 13, 2017
The U.S. government on Wednesday banned the use of a Russian brand of security software by federal agencies and gave them three months to remove the software amid concerns the company has ties to state-sponsored cyberespionage activities, according to U.S. officials. Acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke ordered that Kaspersky Lab software be barred from federal civilian government networks, giving agencies a timeline to get rid of it, according to several officials familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. Duke ordered the scrub on the grounds that the company has connections to the Russian government and its software poses a security risk. “The Department is concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks,” the department said in a statement. “The risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates U.S. national security.”
At least a half-dozen federal agencies run Kaspersky on their networks, the U.S. officials said, although there may be other networks where an agency’s chief information security officer — the official ultimately responsible for systems security — might not be aware it is being used. The order applies only to civilian government networks, not the military’s. But the Defense Department, which includes the National Security Agency, does not generally use Kaspersky software, officials said. The U.S. intelligence community has long assessed that Kaspersky has ties to the Russian government, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The company’s founder, Eugene Kaspersky, graduated from a KGB-supported cryptography school and had worked in Russian military intelligence. Richard Ledgett, former NSA deputy director, hailed the move. Speaking Wednesday on the sidelines of the Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington, he noted that Kaspersky, like other Russian companies, is “bound to comply with the directive of Russian state security services, by law, to share with them information from their servers.”
The fear here is that being a Russian company, Kaspersky Labs is legally bound to comply with Russian laws ... draconian laws that basically require Russian internet/telecommunication companies to fully cooperate with Russian security services and that the security services have unlimited access to all requested information/data. It is also conjectured that Kaspersky has unofficially tested the stealth attributes/capabilities of Russian-state hacker-modules.
