Clients of Kaspersky antivirus in america discovered in the previous few days that their cybersecurity software program was mechanically changed with a brand new one known as UltraAV, based on a number of prospects who posted on social media. And among the prospects mentioned they’d no thought this was going to occur.
“Woke as much as Kasperky [sic] utterly 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 lately offered Kaspersky merchandise previous to the latest gross sales ban, informed TechCrunch that he was left “irritated” by the transfer to mechanically take away Kaspersky software program and change it with a wholly totally different antivirus. A former senior U.S. authorities cybersecurity official mentioned that this was an instance of the “large threat” posed by the entry granted by Kaspersky software program.
It’s price noting that, then again, different prospects did report receiving an e-mail from Kaspersky in regards to the transition to UltraAV.
The transition to UltraAV comes months after the U.S. authorities took the unprecedented resolution to ban all gross sales of Kaspersky software program throughout america. 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 supply restricted safety updates to prospects till September 29.
In early September, Axios reported that Kaspersky had reached a deal to dump its prospects to American cybersecurity agency Pango, which owns UltraAV, a comparatively new antivirus software program.
UltraAV has a web page on its web site asserting that Kaspersky prospects 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 printed. 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 prospects 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, in search of to make clear whether or not all Kaspersky prospects have been notified of the transition immediately.
Avi Fleischer, a buyer of Kaspersky, informed TechCrunch that he additionally was shocked by the transition.
“I’m irritated at Kaspersky,” mentioned Fleischer, who can be the founding father of Technical Difficulties, an organization that was an official Kaspersky reseller. “Mainly, on my computer systems, Kaspersky pushed an uninstall of the Kaspersky merchandise and pushed an automated 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,” mentioned Fleischer. “Personally, I eliminated the UltraAV & UltraVPN instantly.”
Rob Joyce, the previous director of cybersecurity on the Nationwide Safety Company, mentioned in a submit on X that, “Customers have been ‘migrated’ — software program uninstalled and a very totally different product was put in automagically,” including that Kaspersky “had complete management of your machine.”
