Anti-virus company “Kaspersky Lab” for more than ten years used a fake attack to sabotage the work of competitors — Microsoft, Avast, AVG, and other companies. On this secret project for the Agency told Reuters former employees of the company.
According to two ex-employees of “Kaspersky Lab”, the campaign to deceive the competition was aimed at such a competing firm. As a result antivirus software from these manufacturers deleted important files from the computers of their clients, mistakenly taking them for malware.
The interlocutors Reuters, on condition of anonymity, said that the peak of activity in the framework of this project came in 2009-2013. It is reported that during this period the company’s employees found out how the anti-virus software competitors to make his mark benign files as malware.
The opportunity for such sabotage was provided due to the fact that firms operating in the field of computer security, shared information on the background of increasing number of malware. According to industry experts, the company gave each other a license to use antivirus tools, changed by malware samples and collect the suspicious files in the aggregator.
Sources Reuters claim that the founder of a Russian company Eugene Kaspersky told to conduct operations to sabotage competitors ‘ activities for two main reasons. First, he believed that small firms simply copied the software “Kaspersky Lab”, instead of creating their own. Secondly, he wanted to corrupt competitors, to increase the company’s share in the market, told the news Agency, and according to them, they belonged to a narrow circle of people aware of sabotage.
“Kaspersky lab” categorically rejected accusations of sabotage. “Our company has never conducted a secret campaign to deceive competitors to their erroneous conclusions damaged their position in the market,” said Kaspersky Reuters. He added that such actions are “unethical, unfair, and their legitimacy is at least doubtful.”
Kaspersky also told Reuters that his company had become a victim of such provocations in November 2012, when software is incorrectly identified as malicious files from companies Tencent, Mail.ru and gaming platform Steam. He called the author of provocation “third party”, but ruled out that it may be involved in the anti-virus company, as “it would cause great damage to the industry.”
Reuters notes that senior Microsoft, AVG and Avast also previously complained about such provocations. When journalists contacted them in the preparation of this material, they refused to comment on speculation about his involvement in the sabotage of “Kaspersky Lab”.
In March 2015, Bloomberg published an article stating that the virus, who has previously worked in the KGB, continues to work closely with the Russian security services is hiring their former employees in a responsible position. Eugene Kaspersky said then that the company’s relationship with the intelligence agencies do not go beyond the legal field, and a significant portion Bloomberg published material — “blatant lies”.
