For all the talk that the Internet is a global commons, the security of it is a place where national borders still matter.
— Peter Singer, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of books on computer wars, on online security companies ties to their countries governments.
For example, the Wall Street Journal reports, FireEye sometimes gives the U.S. government advance copies of its hacker-activity reports. The Milpitas company s early backer was In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the CIA. CEO David DeWalt told the WSJ that he would think twice before publicizing a hacking campaign by Americans — something that potential customers might think twice about as the company expands internationally.
Last week, a Bloomberg News report headlined The Company Securing Your Internet Has Close Ties to Russian Spies examined Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab s close relationship with Russia. From the article, which was published last week:
This closeness starts at the top: Unless [CEO Eugene] Kaspersky is traveling, he rarely misses a weekly banya (sauna) night with a group of about 5 to 10 that usually includes Russian intelligence officials. Kaspersky says in an interview that the group saunas are purely social: When I go to banya, they re friends.
Bloomberg notes that while Kaspersky Lab has published a series of reports that examined alleged electronic espionage by the U.S., Israel, and the U.K., the company hasn t pursued alleged Russian operations with the same vigor.
Not so, Kaspersky replied on his blog Friday, where he also denied ever working for the KGB:
For some reason they forgot about our reports on Red October, CloudAtlas, Miniduke, CosmicDuke, Epic Turla, Penguin Turla, Black Energy 1 and 2, Agent.BTZ, and Teamspy. According to some observers, these attacks were attributed to Russian cyber-spies.
Illustration from Seattle Times/KRT archives