US President Joe Bidenannounced the imminent ban on Kaspersky antivirus software and gave consumers and businesses until September 29, 2024, to find alternative security software.
“Today, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the Department of Commerce (BIS) announced a decision prohibiting Kaspersky Lab, Inc., a subsidiary of a Russian anti-virus software company, from directly or indirectly providing antivirus products or software and cybersecurity to the United States or to U.S. persons,” a new announcement from the American BIS agency states.
The ban also applies to partners and subsidiaries of Kaspersky Lab, Inc.
With this announcement, Joe Biden is banning the sale of Kaspersky products in the US, as well as providing updates to existing customers. This means that all users in the US will be forced to abandon the company and find alternative software by the end of September.
See also: KVRT: Kaspersky's new tool for scanning and removing viruses on Linux
According to Gina Raimondo of the Department of Commerce, this is a government decision aimed at protecting national security.
“Russia has repeatedly shown that it has the ability and intent to exploit Russian companies, like Kaspersky Lab, to collect sensitive U.S. intelligence. We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to protect U.S. national security and the American people.“.
For its part, Kaspersky has denied any ties to the Russian government. But the US believes that due to the cyber capabilities and the ability of the Russian government to influence Kaspersky's operations, there was no other way to mitigate the risk, other than a complete ban on the company's services and software.
The national security concerns stem largely from the fact that Kaspersky had acquired some secret security tools and exploits linked to the Equation Group, which is believed to be the NSA.
At the time, Kaspersky said its antivirus software automatically retrieved the NSA files after it detected potentially malicious files. This isn't necessarily surprising. Several antivirus vendors upload files suspected of being malicious to their servers for further analysis.
See also: Joe Biden: Chinese cars threaten national security
However, the US government believes that Russian FSB agents or other Kaspersky insiders used Kaspersky antivirus to scan computers around the world, aiming to find files of interest to them.
Since then, the US government has been slowly banning the use of Kaspersky products within federal agencies and is now announcing a blanket ban for all users and businesses across the country.
As part of these announcements, the BIS has created a special page outlining what the Kaspersky ban means for corporate customers and consumers.
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As of today, Kaspersky is prohibited from entering into any new deals in the US. This includes any software or product from the company.
As of September 29, 2024, Kaspersky or any of its representatives are prohibited from distributing software updates to customers and operating the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) in the United States.
While the government states that it will not take legal action against individuals who continue to use software after these deadlines, they will use the software at their own risk.
In addition to the ban, the BIS has added three entities related to Kaspersky—AO Kaspersky Lab, OOO Kaspersky Group (Russia), and Kaspersky Labs Limited (United Kingdom)—to the list of entities for alleged collaboration with the Russian government.
See also: FCC: Kaspersky poses a risk to US national security
Kaspersky commented on the ban as follows (to BleepingComputer):
“Kaspersky is aware of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision to ban the use of Kaspersky software in the United States. The decision does not affect the company’s ability to sell and promote cyber threat intelligence offerings and/or cyber threat training in the U.S. While the security of Kaspersky products could have been independently verified by a trusted third party, Kaspersky believes that the Department of Commerce made its decision based on the current geopolitical climate and theoretical concerns, rather than an overall assessment of the integrity of Kaspersky’s products and services. Kaspersky is not involved in activities that threaten U.S. national security and has in fact helped protect against various threat actors. The company intends to pursue all legal options available to it to maintain its current operations and relationships.“.
In March 2022, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, BSI, warnedcompanies not to use Russian Kaspersky's antivirus products, due to Russian threats against the EU, NATO, and Germany.
As BSI had explained, antivirus software typically has higher-level privileges on Windows systems, maintaining a permanent, encrypted and unverifiable connection to the vendor's servers for continuous virus updates.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com
