German Government Advises Against Using Kaspersky Antivirus

upstart writes:

German government advises against using Kaspersky antivirus:

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, BSI, is warning companies against using Kaspersky antivirus products due to threats made by Russia against the EU, NATO, and Germany.

Kaspersky is a Moscow-based cybersecurity and antivirus provider founded in 1997, that has a long history of success, but also controversy over the company's possible relationship with the Russian government.

[...] Kaspersky is also believed to offer its cybersecurity protection services to Russian state IT infrastructure, making it a concern that the company cannot stay completely neutral.

[...] As the BSI statement explains, antivirus software typically has higher-level privileges on Windows systems, maintaining a permanent, encrypted, and non-verifiable connection to the vendor's servers for constant virus definition updates.

Furthermore, as real-time protection from almost all antivirus vendors can upload suspicious files to remote servers for further analysis, there is concern that antivirus developers could use their software to exfiltrate sensitive files. While Kaspersky is likely trustworthy and ethical, it still has to abide by Russian laws and regulations, including allowing state agents to access private firm databases.

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