Clients of Kaspersky antivirus in the USA came upon in the previous few days that their cybersecurity software program was mechanically changed with a brand new one referred to as UltraAV, in response to a number of clients who posted on social media. And a few of the clients stated they’d no thought this was going to occur.
“Woke as much as Kasperky [sic] fully gone from my system with Extremely AV and Extremely VPN freshly put in (not by me, simply mechanically whereas I slept),” a person on Reddit wrote. Others reported having the identical expertise in the identical Reddit thread, in addition to in different threads.
A reseller, who till just lately bought Kaspersky merchandise previous to the current gross sales ban, informed TechCrunch that he was left “aggravated” by the transfer to mechanically take away Kaspersky software program and exchange it with a wholly totally different antivirus. A former senior U.S. authorities cybersecurity official stated that this was an instance of the “enormous danger” posed by the entry granted by Kaspersky software program.
It’s price noting that, alternatively, different clients did report receiving an e mail from Kaspersky concerning the transition to UltraAV.
The transition to UltraAV comes months after the U.S. authorities took the unprecedented determination to ban all gross sales of Kaspersky software program throughout the USA. In June, the Commerce Division introduced that gross sales of the antivirus software program could be banned beginning July 20. After that, Kaspersky was allowed to offer restricted safety updates to clients till September 29.
In early September, Axios reported that Kaspersky had reached a deal to dump its clients to American cybersecurity agency Pango, which owns UltraAV, a comparatively new antivirus software program.
UltraAV has a web page on its website saying that Kaspersky clients utilizing Home windows would get the brand new antivirus with their present subscription and that “no motion is required.” It’s unclear when the web page was revealed. The earliest model of the web page saved on the Web Archive dates again to September 6.
Kaspersky additionally confirmed the transition to UltraAV.
“Kaspersky has moreover partnered with UltraAV to make the transition to their product as seamless as doable, which is why on 9/19, U.S. Kaspersky antivirus clients obtained a software program replace facilitating the transition to UltraAV. This replace ensured that customers wouldn’t expertise a niche in safety upon Kaspersky’s exit from the market,” a Kaspersky worker solely named Vadim M. wrote in an official firm discussion board on Saturday.
Neither Pango nor Kaspersky responded to requests for remark, looking for to make clear whether or not all Kaspersky clients had been notified of the transition straight.
Avi Fleischer, a buyer of Kaspersky, informed TechCrunch that he additionally was shocked by the transition.
“I’m aggravated at Kaspersky,” stated Fleischer, who can be the founding father of Technical Difficulties, an organization that was an official Kaspersky reseller. “Principally, on my computer systems, Kaspersky pushed an uninstall of the Kaspersky merchandise and pushed an computerized set up of UltraAV & UltraVPN onto my computer systems. They need to’ve given me the choice to simply accept UltraAV or not.”
“They need to NEVER push software program onto somebody’s laptop with out specific permission,” stated Fleischer. “Personally, I eliminated the UltraAV & UltraVPN instantly.”
Rob Joyce, the previous director of cybersecurity on the Nationwide Safety Company, stated in a publish on X that, “Customers had been ‘migrated’ — software program uninstalled and a completely totally different product was put in automagically,” including that Kaspersky “had complete management of your machine.”
