, Columnist
If Kaspersky Bothers You, So Must Its Rivals
Anti-virus software is an obvious target for intelligence services; but most consumers have different concerns.
No longer looking so secure.
Photographer: Ian GavanThis article is for subscribers only.
In all the recent bombshell reports about the Kaspersky anti-virus software, it's easy to focus on the Russian threat and miss the general context: Every government that employs hackers tries to weaponize anti-virus software. Government departments certainly need to consider that in choosing their own software; whether that's something the average computer user should worry about is a different matter.
In The Washington Post's report that confirms Kaspersky Lab's carefully worded suspicion, made public in 2015, that it had been hacked by Israeli intelligence, there is this casual passage: