The Russia connectionFederal agencies complete second phase of Kaspersky product removal

Published 1 December 2017

The U.S. federal government has completed the first two phases of a three-part plan to remove all Kaspersky Lab’s products from government computer systems. The U.S. intelligence community said that the Russian cybersecurity company’s anti-virus software was used to collect sensitive information from the systems on which it was installed, and deliver that information to Russia’s intelligence agencies.

The U.S. federal government has completed the first two phases of a three-part plan to remove all Kaspersky Lab’s products from government computer systems.

The Russian cybersecurity company’s anti-virus software was used to collect sensitive information from the systems on which it was installed, and deliver that information to Russia’s intelligence agencies.

nthat intelligence officials say could be a conduit for Kremlin hacking,

A DHS official told Nextgov that this means that federal government agencies have scanned all of their networks for the Kaspersky Lab products, and devised plans for how to turn off and replace the anti-virus software if it was found.

DHS Assistant Secretary Jeanette Manfra told lawmakers a few weeks ago that six small agencies missed an October deadline for the first phase of the removal because they did not have the resources to conduct the scanning of their systems themselves,

DHS has helped these agencies scan their systems, Manfra told Nextgov.

Manfra said that all government agencies have also met a 19 November deadline for developing plans for removing and replacing Kaspersky Lab software.

DHS’s binding operational directive requires all agencies to begin removing Kaspersky products by 19 December. Manfra said that that many agencies have already begun the process.

NextGov notes that many national security-focused departments and agencies, including DHS and DOD, removed Kaspersky software from their networks years ago, following concerns expressed by the U.S. intelligence community about the close ties between Kspaersky and Russian intelligence agencies.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Russian hackers may have used security holes in Kaspersky to steal NSA hacking tools from a contractor’s personal laptop.

The first phase of Kaspersky scans covered about 94 percent of federal agencies, and found the Russian anti-virus software in about 15 percent of those agencies. Manfra told lawmakers that in most cases, those agencies did not purchase Kaspersky Lab software directly, but as part of a larger software package.