Security News > 2022 > March > Germany advises citizens to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Germany's BSI federal cybersecurity agency has warned the country's citizens not to install Russian-owned Kaspersky antivirus, saying it has "Doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer."

A company spokesman told The Register: "We believe this decision is not based on a technical assessment of Kaspersky products - that we continuously advocated for with the BSI and across Europe - but instead is being made on political grounds... Kaspersky is a private global cybersecurity company and, as a private company, does not have any ties to the Russian or any other government."

Like US-sanctioned enterprise infosec firm Positive Technology, Kaspersky tried to soothe fears in the West by moving its European base of operations to Switzerland in 2018.

When he uploaded an exploit onto his home laptop in 2015, his Kaspersky antivirus functioned exactly as intended: it recognized the malware and uploaded a copy to Kaspersky's servers.

Enraged, the US said Kaspersky had handed the exploit to Russia's FSB spy agency, jailed Pho, and banned the use of Kaspersky across its entire government.

Days after the Pho story first broke rumors began swirling that Israeli spies had hacked Kaspersky only to discover the infosec firm was working hand-in-glove with Russian spy agencies.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/03/15/kaspersky_germany_antivirus/