"According to emails obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek (and confirmed by Kaspersky Lab as genuine), Kaspersky’s ties to the Russian FSB (the successor to the KGB) are much tighter than have previously been reported. It has allegedly worked with the government to develop security software and worked on joint projects that “the CEO knew would be embarrassing if made public.”
No, he was trained by the KGB, the predecessor to the FSB, SVR RF, and , I think, a couple other organizations. (That is, he was trained while the Soviet Union and the KGB existed, and before the Russian Federation became independent and existing and new Russian institutions succeeded to the roles of the former Soviet organs.)
More specifically, Kaspersky studied at Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications and Computer Science, which was administered by the KGB, and "offered the best mathematics courses available in the old USSR" [0].
It is disingenuous and misleading (like so much of the anti-Russia narrative) to state that he was "trained by the KGB", as though they taught him everything they know about spy-craft and espionage.
Cause the Pentium chip doesn't send info back to Russian intelligence services?
The US has a lot to lose by linking tech firms to intelligence services, but in this case - when an agent of one gov't is hacking another gov't, links to intelligence services are suitable for discussion.
Jacob Applebaum publicly claimed (at the Chaos Computer Club, Germany, in the mid-2010s) that the Five Eyes and other intelligence services, for better or worse, attack employees of network providers, SaaS providers, and likely native software providers.
It's not clear to me if it matters what country they are working from. If the NSA has a credible threat in the USA, they can be authorized to assist with domestic intelligence services to infiltrate services required to get their job done.
One specific attack he claimed happened was a MITM of LinkedIn connections at foreign ISPs. I don't think it's a stretch to call them a "cyberthreat", especially if you are a Russian citizen or are trying to secure computer systems outside of the USA (I'm giving Kaspersky a generous benefit of the doubt).
Yes, the NSA and other Five Eyes agencies go after foreign ISPs.
There are strong legal protections keeping the NSA from spying on Americans without very strong evidence. Lawfare has covered this extensively. Here's an example from Wittes (even stronger because he's basically a neocon). https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/911231805302480896
So as a defacto agent of the Russian government, Kaspersky certainly considers the NSA (and other Western gov't agencies) to be an adversary.
Agreed that it's crazy that the US govt ever used Kaspersky software.
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/252421-russian-cybersec...
"According to emails obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek (and confirmed by Kaspersky Lab as genuine), Kaspersky’s ties to the Russian FSB (the successor to the KGB) are much tighter than have previously been reported. It has allegedly worked with the government to develop security software and worked on joint projects that “the CEO knew would be embarrassing if made public.”