Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab wants to provide the United States authorities access to the source code of its antivirus software, CEO of the company Eugene Kaspersky announced today to The Australian.
Recently several members of the U.S. Senate openly worried about the use of the software by American government agencies. After that, several members of the American intelligence community stated to be monitoring the usage of Kaspersky software and to be worried. When asked whether they would use the software themselves, the heads of the Defense Intelligence Agency, NSA, and the American secret services stated they wouldn't.
However, according to Kaspersky, it would be suicide to help any country to add vulnerabilities to software used by foreign secret agencies. "It’s suicide. It would not only kill the business, but you’d have to save your life somewhere in a jungle, in the Amazon River or in Siberia", according to Kaspersky.
Therefore he offers the source code of his antivirus software for checking. It wouldn't be the first time, Kaspersky explains, "when we have government contracts, in some cases we’re asked to disclose our technologies. And we do it."
On the claim that some of the Kaspersky employees could be corrupt and add backdoors to the software, Kaspersky replies, "it’s not possible to inject the code because people are watching."
