Jeanne Shaheen seeks to cut ties with Kaspersky Labs, Russian cyber firm

New Hampshire’s senior U.S. senator has doubled down against Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm accused of maintaining suspiciously close ties with the Russian government.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic member of chamber’s Foreign Relations, Appropriations, Armed Services and Small Business Committees, plans to introduce legislation outright blocking the federal government from doing business with Kaspersky Labs over concerns involving the company’s connections with the the Kremlin, she said Monday.

“The Kremlin hacked our presidential election, is waging a cyberwar against our NATO allies and is probing opportunities to use similar tactics against democracies worldwide. Why then are federal agencies, local and state governments and millions of Americans unwittingly inviting this threat into their cyber networks and secure spaces?” Ms. Shaheen wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times.

“To close this alarming national security vulnerability, I am advancing bipartisan legislation to prohibit the federal government from using Kaspersky Lab software,” she wrote. “When broad defense legislation comes before the Senate in the weeks ahead, I hope to amend it to ban Kaspersky software from all of the federal government.”

Kaspersky has denied keeping inappropriate ties with any government, Russian or otherwise, but the directors of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency each testified in May that wouldn’t be comfortable installing its software on their agencies’ computers.

“I cannot disclose the classified assessments that prompted the intelligence chiefs’ response,” Ms. Shaheen said. “But it is unacceptable to ignore questions about Kaspersky Lab because the answers are shielded in classified materials.”

Ms. Shaheen introduced an amendment in June to the Senate’s annual defense spending policy bill already calling on the military to cut ties with Kaspersky, but her op-ed indicates she’ll propose legislation blocking the government from working with Kaspersky altogether.

In the interim, the General Services Administration banned government agencies from using certain Kaspersky software, and in late July the House Science Committee asked 22 government agencies for details about their potential use of Kaspersky products.

“As a private company, Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts,” Kaspersky said previously. “The company has a 20-year history in the IT security industry of always abiding by the highest ethical business practices, and Kaspersky Lab believes it is completely unacceptable that the company is being unjustly accused without any hard evidence to back up these false allegations.”

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of authorizing a campaign targeting last year’s White House race and particularly the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, incorporating cyberattacks and other tactics. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied those accusations.