Kaspersky, which Anti-Virus firm Gartner places as one of the world’s top cybersecurity vendors for customers, said in a declaration that it would submit the source code of its Application and future product updates for review by a broad cross-section of computer protection experts and government officials.
It also vowed to have external parties review other phases of its business, including software development. Reviews of its Application, which is used on some 400 million machines worldwide, will begin by the first quarter of next year, it said.
Kaspersky did not identify the outside reviewers but said they would have strong software security credentials and be able to accompany technical audits, source code reviews, and vulnerability assessments.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidency last month barred government bureaus from using Kaspersky Lab anti-virus products.
The world’s top cybersecurity experts are distributed over whether Russian intelligence hijacked Kaspersky software externally its knowledge or whether the firm or one of its agents was complicit.
Israeli intelligence officials said they had found Russian government hackers using Kaspersky anti-virus software to steal spy codes from the U.S. National Security Agency, according to reports this month in major U.S. media.
Kaspersky has frequently denied those allegations, saying it has not supported Russia or other governments engage in surveillance and that it is simply caught up in a wider geopolitical spat between Moscow and Washington following accusations Russian hackers interfered in last year’s U.S. elections.
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