Kaspersky Lab Is Focus of FBI Investigators

UPDATE 7/5/2017: U.S. General Services Administration doesn't know which agencies use Kaspersky software. Their products are "ingrained across almost 3,500 products."
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/russia-threatens-retaliation-if-us-bans-kaspersky-lab-a-10081

Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, has headquarters in Moscow and employees in countries throughout the world. The company had over $600 billion in revenue in 2015.

Late Tuesday, according to Reuters, several U.S. employees of the company were interviewed by the FBI. “Federal Bureau of Investigation agents visited the homes of Kaspersky employees late on Tuesday in multiple U.S. cities, although no search warrants were served, according to two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the FBI probe.”

Today the Senate Armed Services Committee released a defense spending bill that would prohibit the U.S. Defense Department from using Kaspersky software. A summary of the legislation mentions concerns that the company “might be vulnerable to Russian government influence.” According to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, author of the amendment including the prohibition against using Kaspersky software, “ties between Kaspersky Lab and the Kremlin are very alarming.”

The Reuters article can be found here.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kasperskylab-probe-idUSKBN19J2IX

An ABC News story about Kaspersky can be found here.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/source-fbi-interviews-employees-russian-software-firm-raising/story?id=48328074

An NBC News story can be found here.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-interviews-employees-russia-linked-cyber-security-firm-kaspersky-lab-n777571

In May, five high level intelligence officials, and the acting FBI chief, testified before the Senate intelligence committee that they do not trust software from  Kaspersky. According to an article in The Register, “The question of Kaspersky came courtesy of Senator Marco Rubio (R‑FL), who asked them all if they trusted the Russian-built security software. The answer was a unanimous no.”

The Register article can be found here.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/11/us_security_chiefs_dont_trust_kaspersky/

In December of 2016, a top manager at Kaspersky in Moscow, Ruslan Stoyanov, was arrested on charges of treason, along with a senior Russian intelligence officer. He has not been seen since then. Sergei Mikhailov, deputy head of the information security department of the FSB, Russia’s national security service, was also arrested on treason charges.

The Business Insider about the arrests in Moscow can be found here.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-top-manager-at-russian-cybersecurity-firm-arrested-in-moscow-2017-1

A Fobes article about the arrests can be found here.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/01/25/russia-kaspersky-treason-arrest/#3fa309bd2daf

A March 2017 article in Bloomberg described the close ties between Kaspersky Lab and the KGB. “Founder and Chief Executive Officer Eugene (Yevgeny) Kaspersky was educated at a KGB-sponsored cryptography institute, then worked for Russian military intelligence, and in 2007, one of the company’s Japanese ad campaigns used the slogan ‘A Specialist in Cryptography from KGB.’”
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The Bloomberg article can be found here.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecurity-kaspersky-has-close-ties-to-russian-spies​