Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO of Russia's Kaspersky Lab, is sure that US authorities are aware of the company's non-involvement in cyber espionage in favor of Russia.
"I'm more than sure that they know that we cannot do this. The company employs a thousand people, but this does not mean that some programmers are sitting in dirty sweaters in the dungeon and each writes a piece of code. These are collectives that make whole pieces of the project, so we can not do something invisibly," he told journalists on the sidelines of a cybersecurity forum.
Kaspersky said that, in his opinion, the company simply fell victim to the political struggle.
"Now they are just hitting the whole of Russia, and since we are there, we also hit," he said.
Last week, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke ordered all US federal departments and agencies to stop using Kaspersky Lab products within the next 90 days, saying that Kaspersky products represented a threat to security. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said discriminatory steps against the Kaspersky Lab cast a shadow on the image of the United States as a reliable partner and represent "a manifestation of unfair competition."
Last week the US Congress hearing, scheduled for September 27, where Eugene Kaspersky was supposed to testify, was being postponed.
Kaspersky was invited to testify at the hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology. According to the committee's chair Lamar Smith, the hearing was going to be held to discuss Kaspersky's products and ensure that US federal systems were not susceptible to potential cyber espionage.
