For weeks, U.S. media has reported on the threat posed by Russian antivirus company Kaspersky, whose software was allegedly tied to the lifting of government malware from an NSA contractor’s computer. Now, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of the country’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ, has warned against Russia-based antivirus companies. The organization published new guidance on such software, which states that in “government departments… where it is assessed that access to the information by the Russian state would be a risk to national security, a Russian-based AV company should not be chosen,” according to an NCSC email sent to The Daily Beast.
—Joseph Cox
