Biden bans massive antivirus software company due to Russian hacker concerns

Whether you know it or not, odds are good that you have at some point in your life worked with Kaspersky Lab software. Founded in the late 1990s, the Moscow tech company has spent decades cementing its reputation as a global powerhouse in antiviral and cybersecurity products. It claims on its website to serve some 400 million users and 250,000 corporate clients, all in the name of “building a safer world” in which “technology improves all of our lives.”

Despite its position in the uppermost echelons of elite cybersecurity businesses, Kaspersky has long been dogged by allegations of Russian government influence, leading in part to a 2017 U.S. government ban on using the company’s software on federal computers. Those tensions reached a crescendo last week, however, when Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced plans to “prohibit Kaspersky Lab and all of its affiliates, subsidiaries and parent company from providing cyber security and antivirus software anywhere in the United States” in a call with reporters. While Kaspersky’s alleged susceptibility to Russian influence has “certainly been on the government’s radar for a number of years,” the “malign activity from Russia in particular over the past couple of years” led the government to “more broadly address this threat,” said Commerce Department’s Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services head Liz Cannon to NPR last week.

‘Undue and unacceptable risks’

Kaspersky “poses undue and unacceptable risks to U.S. national security and to the security and safety of U.S. persons,” The Commerce Department said in an investigation into the company. Broadly, there are “three particular risks” to Americans, Cannon said. Not only does its software give Kaspersky “essentially administrator access to the devices on which it operates,” but it can “inject malware, or it can choose to withhold critical updates” as well. These, plus the fact that Kaspersky is “subject to the direction and control of the Russian government” were what elevated the issue to the “level of a real national security threat.” Prior to the 2017 federal systems ban, Kaspersky had faced an “internal power struggle that placed allies of Russia’s secret services against ‘tech-savvy’ staff and Western investors,'” Semafor said.

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The ban on Kaspersky software within the United States is thanks to “relatively new Commerce Department authorities built on executive orders signed by Presidents Joe B