Paul Rosenzweig on Lawfare discusses the abrupt arrest of a manager at Kaspersky Labs, and his own discretion when it comes to security software. Did you know KL was located in Russia?
The news today is shocking. Russian authorities have arrested a top Kaspersky cybersecurity manager for espionage. Kaspersky is a Russian-based cybersecurity company, widely regarded as having close ties to the Russian government. Kaspersky himself has close connections to the KGB [as an aside, that is one reason why I personally do not use Kaspersky’s products.] According to English language reports: “Kaspersky Lab on Wednesday confirmed reports in Russia’s respected Kommersant newspaper that Ruslan Stoyanov, head of its computer incidents investigations unit, was arrested in December. Kommersant said that Stoyanov was arrested along with a senior Russian FSB intelligence officer and that they both face charges of treason.” That’s two people who, no doubt, will soon be convicted and, one suspects, thereafter executed.
As I understand Paul, he thinks American activity in connection with the recent election may have provided enough of a signal to Russian intelligence to pinpoint an American mole in KL. Paul thinks we might have done better:
Today we see the costs of the public discussion of intelligence. I admit to speculating here (though with good reason, I think) but two of our sources (including one in Kaspersky) are now blown and the reason may well be that we felt the need to publicly disclose the information we gleaned from their efforts in order to publicly defend the IC against President Trump’s unjustified and unjustifiable attacks. To be fair, part of the reason for the need for the publication was also the Obama administration’s remarkable reluctance to act earlier this year and the relatively laughable nature of the sanctions we imposed. They had the tools but failed to use them. And as a result, two men will, I think …. die.
Some more blood sacrificed to American politics? There have been several incidents of wars being extended for election reasons, which seems despicable. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what happened here.
