Future targets included nearly two dozen other foreign antivirus makers, including Checkpoint in Israel and Avast in the Czech Republic.Īt the N.S.A., analysts were barred from using Kaspersky antivirus software because of the risk it would give the Kremlin broad access to their machines and data.

The documents showed Kaspersky was not the N.S.A.’s only target.

effort in 2008 that concluded that Kaspersky’s software collected sensitive information off customers’ machines.

Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, described a top-secret, N.S.A. A draft of a top-secret report leaked by Edward J. has harmed Kaspersky Lab’s reputation and its commercial operations without any evidence of wrongdoing by the company.”įor years, intelligence agencies suspected that Kaspersky Lab’s security products provided a back door for Russian intelligence. Kaspersky claimed in an open letter that “D.H.S. Last month, Kaspersky Lab sued the Trump administration after a Department of Homeland Security directive banning its software from federal computer networks. That question has taken on renewed importance over the last three months in the wake of United States officials’ accusations that Kaspersky’s antivirus software was used for Russian intelligence gathering, an accusation that Kaspersky has rigorously denied. But from a technical point of view, if an antivirus maker wanted to, was coerced to, or was hacked or somehow subverted, could it create a signature to flag classified documents?” “I didn’t want to get into the complex accusations. “I wanted to know if this was a feasible attack mechanism,” Mr. developer, and may have played a critical role in broader Russian intelligence gathering. Wardle’s curiosity was piqued by recent news that Russian spies had used Kaspersky antivirus products to siphon classified documents off the home computer of an N.S.A. Wardle recently succeeded in subverting antivirus software sold by Kaspersky Lab, turning it into a powerful search tool for classified documents. A former hacker at the National Security Agency, Mr.