Kaspersky Lab to Investigate Risk of Hack by Foreign Intelligence Agencies

On Monday, internet news website The Intercept uncovered documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealing that along with other cybersecurity solutions providers, Kaspersky Lab had come under "relentless" NSA and GCHQ cyber attack. The documents also revealed that the agencies are regularly involved in efforts to thwart, reverse engineer and otherwise disable security software, "sometimes under questionable legal authority." The Intercept noted that Kaspersky Lab was the "one security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents." 

Kaspersky Lab, described by The Intercept to be "a prolific hunter of state-sponsored malware," was founded by Eugene Kaspersky in 2010, and has since gained over 270,000 corporate clients and some 400 million users worldwide.

In a Russian-language press release issued Tuesday, Kaspersky Lab stated that they "constantly check the code of their products, scanning for vulnerabilities to ensure user protection. We are carefully studying the disclosed information to assess the potential risks to our infrastructure." 

Reiterating its Monday comments to The Intercept, the company also noted that it "finds it very disturbing that intelligence agencies are targeting the developers of software solutions in the field of information security, which stand to protect internet users, instead of focusing their resources against real cybercriminals. Kaspersky Lab would once again like to emphasize that all companies and organizations working in the field of information security must unite to protect user data, to respect the right to privacy on the internet and to prevent mass surveillance."