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Kaspersky offers to release source code and testify over alleged Russian links
The founder of security company Kaspersky Lab has offered to testify before Congress and provide the company’s source code to government officials in response to an FBI investigation and a proposal that would see the company banned from working with the U.S. military.
Eugene Kaspersky (pictured) made the offer via an interview with the Associated Press, saying that he was also prepared to move part of the company’s research work to the U.S. from its head office to counter rumors about links to the Russian government. Kaspersky claimed the rumors were first started more than two decades ago out of professional jealousy. “If the United States needs, we can disclose the source code,” he told AP. He added in reference to his offer to testify before Congress that he was willing to do “anything I can do to prove that we don’t behave maliciously.”
Alleged links between Kaspersky and the Russian government are not new. Kaspersky himself studied at a KGB-sponsored school. But the relationship between the two became serious news last week when it emerged that FBI agents had approached a number of the company’s U.S.-based employees after business hours to ask questions, though no search warrants were served.
That questioning was followed by a formal proposal floated June 30 that would bar the use of Kaspersky Lab products by the U.S. military. Senator Jeanne Shaneen (D-NH) told ABC News that there was “a consensus in Congress and among administration officials that Kaspersky Lab cannot be trusted to protect critical infrastructure.”
The rightful concern, should Kaspersky agree to hand over the source code to the company’s antivirus and related security products, is whether doing so will allow government authorities, such as the National Security Agency, to discover new exploits and ways to bypass security software. That may sound somewhat extreme, but one of the revelations from the recent exploit dumps from The Shadow Brokers is that the NSA develops exactly that: tools that are able to bypass antivirus software such as that designed by Kaspersky.
Picture: itupictures/Flickr
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