After the recent claims of the involvement of Kaspersky with Russian authorities in the hacking of the confidential information of other countries including NSA, Kaspersky has decided that it is time to make a substantial move. Kaspersky has decided to open Kaspersky antivirus source code for users to judge the integrity of their systems and Kaspersky hopes that it will help them to win back customer’s confidence.
Officially named as the Kaspersky Global Transparency Initiative, this scheme gives Kaspersky antivirus source code open for third party scrutiny to end any doubts. This scheme was launched following an offer made from Kaspersky to the US government to audit the source code which was rejected and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) imposed a ban on all Kaspersky softwares on US government computers and systems.
In a statement made by Kaspersky’s CEO, he quoted the following:
“With these actions, we will be able to overcome mistrust and support our commitment to protecting people in any country on our planet.”
The plan of the opening of Kaspersky antivirus source code was announced in a blog post by Kaspersky. The four main points of the plan are:
- Kaspersky will provide the source code to trusted and independent investigation authorities globally for inspection.
- Kaspersky to carry out an independent review of the level of its integrated services and security.
- Kaspersky will establish three transparency centres in next three years, “enabling clients, government bodies & concerned organisations to review source code, update code and threat detection rules.”
- Kaspersky will pay up to $100,000 in bug bounty rewards for finding and reporting vulnerabilities in its products.
Let us see if the step of opening Kaspersky antivirus source code is enough for customers and most importantly for the trust restoration of US government on Kaspersky products.
