Eugene Kaspersky
More info
- Known for
- Kaspersky Lab, antivirus research
- Born
- 1965, Novorossiysk
- Affiliation
- Kaspersky Lab (founded 1997)
Russian virus hunter whose antivirus company exposed some of the most sophisticated state spyware ever found — and ended up suspected of being one.
Kaspersky trained in cryptography at a KGB-sponsored institute and started collecting viruses in 1989, when Cascade turned up on his machine at a Ministry of Defence research institute. In 1997 he founded Kaspersky Lab with, among others, his then-wife Natalya Kaspersky.
In 2015 the lab's researchers published their analysis of the Equation Group, an APT widely attributed to the NSA. Washington's response was suspicion rather than gratitude: the software was banned from federal systems in 2017 and from sale in the US altogether in 2024. The episode neatly illustrates the problem with antivirus: a product that reads every file on the machine is either your best defence or your worst exposure, depending on who you trust.