Konstantin Kozlovsky, a Russian hacker in custody in Moscow who has admitted to hacking the Democratic National Committee under instruction of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), also has posted documents to his Facebook page connecting the FSB and Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity firm that insists it is not affiliated with the Russian government.
One of [the documents] shows that in April 2015, an FSB agent inside the office of Kaspersky Lab in Moscow gave a company technician a password for a suspected Russian cyber criminal’s computer. The technician gained access to the computer and obtained decrypted documents for the agent.
The agent, A.V. Kutasevich, worked side-by-side with the Kaspersky technician, Ruslan Sabitov, in the “information retrieval” operation, according to the document, dated April 28, 2015.
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The FSB used the information Kaspersky obtained to help make its case against Kozlovskiy, who is a member of the criminal group Lurk.
Kaspersky previously had publicized its help in bringing down Lurk, which allegedly stole up to $45 million from Russian companies and banks. But it was not known that Kaspersky allowed an FSB agent to be inside its Moscow office to supervise the operation.
On September 13, 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security officially banned federal use of Kaspersky software, and President Trump signed the ban into law Tuesday as part of the larger defense spending bill.
“The case against Kaspersky is well-documented and deeply concerning. This law is long overdue,” said Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who led calls in Congress to scrub the software from government computers. She added that the company’s software represented a “grave risk” to U.S. national security.
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On Tuesday, Christopher Krebs, a senior cyber security official at the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters that nearly all government agencies had fully removed Kaspersky products from their networks in compliance with the September order.
Kaspersky Lab continues to deny any improper cooperation with the FSB:
The company’s founder, Eugene Kaspersky, graduated from a KGB-supported cryptography school and had worked in Russian military intelligence. He insists the firm has “never helped” espionage agencies. “It doesn’t matter if they’re Russians or from any other nation,” he said recently in London. He added that “If the Russian government comes to me and asks me to do anything wrong — or my employees — I will move the business out of Russia.”
Court document points to Kaspersky Lab’s cooperation with Russian security service (WaPo)
Donald Trump Signs Federal Ban on Kaspersky Lab Software (Fortune)