Kaspersky Lab appears to be done explaining its position on the entire “Russians use Kaspersky to spy on everyone” debate. After the US put a ban on its products in the federal agencies, Europe decided to go on a similar road. While the Moscow based cybersecurity firm announced moving many of its core operations out of Russia to Switzerland to appease the US, Australia, and Europe, it didn’t really work.
As Europe considers its own ban on Kaspersky Lab, the company has announced halting all its cybercrime collaborations with the European agencies and organizations. The decision has been taken to protest against a European Parliament motion that had called its software “confirmed to be malicious.”
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Kaspersky Lab has said that the accusation of its products being malicious was untrue and shows a “distinct lack of respect,” BBC reported. In a statement, company founder Eugene Kaspersky said that the decision from the European Parliament “welcomes cybercrime in Europe.”
Kaspersky Lab has only ever tried to rid the world of cybercrime. We have showed time and again that we disclose cyber threats regardless of origin and author, even to our own detriment. This is a setback for the fight against cyber threat, but we remain undeterred in our mission – to save the world from cybercrime.
Kaspersky said that he didn’t want to “further encourage the balkanization of the internet” but his firm had no choice but to take “definitive action.” BBC suggests that this step would stop all collaboration with European cybercrime fighting initiatives, including those with the Europol and the company’s work with the No More Ransom project that helps victims of ransomware to recover their data. The antivirus maker said that this would continue until the European Parliament releases an official clarification.
