FBI advises private companies to cut Kaspersky ties: report

PanARMENIAN.Net - The FBI has been briefing private sector companies on intelligence claiming to show that the Moscow-based cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab is an unacceptable threat to national security, current and former senior U.S. officials familiar with the matter said, according to CyberScoop.

The briefings are one part of an escalating conflict between the U.S. government and Kaspersky amid long-running suspicions among U.S. intelligence officials that Russian spy agencies use the company as an intelligence-gathering tool of global proportions.

The FBI’s goal is to have U.S. firms push Kaspersky out of their systems as soon as possible or refrain from using them in new products or other efforts, the current and former officials say.

The FBI’s counterintelligence section has been giving briefings since beginning of the year on a priority basis, prioritizing companies in the energy sector and those that use industrial control (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems.

In light of successive cyberattacks against the electric grid in Ukraine, the FBI has focused on this sector due to the critical infrastructure designation assigned to it by the Department of Homeland Security.

Additionally, the FBI has briefed large U.S. tech companies that have working partnerships or business arrangements with Kaspersky on products — from routers to virtual machines — that touch a wide range of American businesses and civilians.

In the briefings, FBI officials give companies a high-level overview of the threat assessment, including what the U.S. intelligence community says are the Kaspersky’s deep and active relationships with Russian intelligence. FBI officials point to multiple specific accusations of wrongdoing by Kaspersky, such as a well-known instance of allegedly faking malware.

In a statement to CyberScoop, a Kaspersky spokesperson blamed those particular accusations on “disgruntled, former company employees, whose accusations are meritless” while FBI officials say, in private and away from public scrutiny, they know the incident took place and was blessed by the company’s leadership.