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The Russian Company That Is a Danger to Our Security - By Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
Jeanne Shaheen is a Democratic senator from New Hampshire.MADBURY, N.H. The Kremlin hacked our presidential election, is waging a cyberwar against our NATO allies and is probing opportunities to use similar tactics against democracies worldwide. Why then are federal agencies, local and state governments and millions of Americans unwittingly inviting this threat into their cyber networks and secure spaces?
That threat is posed by antivirus and security software products created by Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based company with extensive ties to Russian intelligence. To close this alarming national security vulnerability, I am advancing bipartisan legislation to prohibit the federal government from using Kaspersky Lab software.
Kaspersky Lab insists that it has no inappropriate ties with any government. The companys products, which are readily available at big-box American retailers, have more than 400 million users around the globe. And it provides security services to major government agencies, including the Department of State, the National Institutes of Health and, reportedly, the Department of Defense. But at a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee in May, six top intelligence officials, including the heads of the F.B.I., C.I.A. and National Security Agency, were asked if they would be comfortable with Kaspersky Lab software on their agencies computers. Each answered with an unequivocal no. I cannot disclose the classified assessments that prompted the intelligence chiefs response. But it is unacceptable to ignore questions about Kaspersky Lab because the answers are shielded in classified materials. Fortunately, there is ample publicly available information to help Americans understand the reasons Congress has serious doubts about the company.
The firms billionaire founder, Eugene Kaspersky, graduated from the elite cryptology institute of the K.G.B., the Soviet Unions main intelligence service, and was a software engineer for Soviet military intelligence. He vehemently dismisses concerns that his company assists Russias intelligence agencies with cyberespionage and claims that he is the target of Cold War-style conspiracy theories. But Kaspersky Lab has committed missteps that reveal the true nature of its work with Russias Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., a successor to the K.G.B.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/kapersky-russia-cybersecurity.html?emc=edit_th_20170905&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284
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The Russian Company That Is a Danger to Our Security - By Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (Original Post)
DonViejo
Sep 2017
OP
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)1. Just removed IT from all of my equipment.
Cirque du So-What
(25,927 posts)2. Hmmm...
Security software from a Russian oligarch with ties to KGB & its successor. What could possibly go wrong?