A strange report is coming out from Reuters: Kaspersky Lab, a popular security service, has allegedly been developing fake malware for over a decade to harm its competitors. The software was/is harmless, but Kaspersky had discovered a way to trick its competitors into thinking it was dangerous. 
Two former Kaspersky employees told Reuters that the illegal attack was originally intended to punish the company's smaller competitors who were "stealing" its technology.
How did it work?
Kaspersky added code to applications that appeared to be malicious but were not. It then anonymously submitted the files to malware aggregators like Google’s VirusTotal. When its competitors saw the addition of the “malicious” file, they added the code to the list of viruses their software recognized. In this way, the companies gave false positives to consumers, which made them untrustworthy.
Kaspersky has reportedly taken a swipe at several major rivals, including Microsoft, AVG and Avast, with this hoax. These companies have not commented on Kaspersky, but they have previously told Reuters that an unknown third party is trying to trick them into giving false positives.
Reuters' sources claim only a small group of people knew about the sabotage, which peaked from 2009 to 2013.
Kaspersky, for its part, denied the allegations:
“Our company has not undertaken any secret campaign to deceive competitors by producing false positives to tarnish their reputation in the marketplace. Such actions are unethical, dishonest, and their legality is questionable to say the least.”
Eugene Kaspersky was not at all happy with the Reuters publication, and reported on Twitter:
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