US concerns about links between Kaspersky Labs and the Russian government led to a ban on the security software being used on US government computers. The ban was only recently signed into law by Donald Trump, and now Kaspersky has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in response.
US concerns about links between Kaspersky Labs and the Russian government led to a ban on the security software being used on US government computers. The ban was only recently signed into law by Donald Trump, and now Kaspersky has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in response.
Kaspersky Labs is asking a federal court to overturn Trump’s ban. The Moscow-based company maintains that it does not have links to the Kremlin, and has published an open letter saying that it had not been afforded «adequate due process» and that the US government’s decision was based on flawed information.
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While the US government may not have been a huge customer for Kaspersky (the complaint states that the government accounted for under $54,000 — 0.03 percent — of its US sales), the impact of the ban is more far-reaching. The company says that the «DHS has harmed Kaspersky Lab’s reputation, negatively affected the livelihoods of its US-based employees and US-based business partners, and undermined the company’s contributions to the broader cybersecurity community.»
In the open letter, Eugene Kaspersky says:
He also took to Twitter to protest his company’s innocence:
Kaspersky has already offered to submit it source code for review as part of a transparency measure, but this has not stopped other companies, including Best Buy, to follow the lead of the government and stop using its software.
Image credit: Faiz Zaki / Shutterstock
