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Earlier this month Kaspersky announced it was suspending vpn service only in the Russian Federation. Kaspersky vpn service remains everywhere else. If Norton were to announce that it was suspending vpn service only in the US, I would be suspicious that Norton was unduly influenced by the US government.  I think the same level of suspicion should be held between Kaspersky and the Russian government.

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wavy, Cybertooth

Biden Administration Split Over Whether to Sanction Kaspersky – article in Wall Street Journal

Some officials are said to fear that sanctioning Kaspersky Lab could increase risk of Russian cyberattack​

The White House’s National Security Council has pressed the Treasury Department to ready the sanctions as part of the broad Western campaign to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, according to officials familiar with the matter. While Treasury officials have been working to prepare the package, sanctions experts within the department have raised concerns over the size and scope of such a move. The company’s software is used by hundreds of millions of customers across the world, making it difficult to enforce the sanctions.

In addition, some officials in the U.S. and Europe fear sanctioning Kaspersky Lab will increase the likelihood of triggering a cyberattack against the West by Moscow, even potentially leveraging the software itself. …

Sanctions of this nature typically block or freeze the assets of companies or individuals who are targeted and bar U.S. citizens from engaging in transactions with those companies or people.

Link to article – https://www.wsj.com/articles/proposal-t … cle_inline

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GDR, OscarCP, Fred

I have now removed KIS from all 4 of our computers – 2 desktops & 2 laptops. KIS replaced by Bitdefender on 2 and Windows Defender on the other 2. I also deleted at Kaspersky the My Kaspersky account associated with our computers.

I had the AdGuard extension on several browsers. AdGuard is HQ’d in Cyprus but was founded in Moscow and is headed by Russians. The extension is now gone and replaced with Ublock Origin. BTW several of the filter lists in UBO are AdGuard lists. I was careful not to include them.

 

I wouldn’t worry about Kaspersky doing anything bad, it would destroy their reputation and their company.  – samak

Hi samak

My wife is more worried about this than I am. She says many of the top tech people at Kaspersky are Russians trained in cyber security by the Russian government. Shouldn’t we expect some of them to be more concerned with being patriotic Russians than the reputation of Kaspersky. She thinks it’s possible that  cyber attacks on big targets could come by way of installed Kaspersky software on little targets.

Right now I believe my wife is being a little paranoid, but I’m going to take KIS off her computer this weekend. On my two computers I am going to wait a while, but Bitdefender and Windows Defender are looking better and better. BTW, I don’t share my better half’s concern that attacks on Nato infrastructure will come through Kaspersky.

But It does look to me like we are now entering the world of 21st Century warfare consisting of sanctions, export controls, and cyber attacks.