A volunteer intelligence gathering group, InformNapalm, has claimed that AI software built by Kaspersky, which is a Russian infosec firm, was used in Russian drones for its war with Ukraine.
Kaspersky and its links with Albatross
Kaspersky Lab is a Russian company that works in software development, and their antivirus software is quite famous. Back in 2017, due to data leaks, the US government banned the use of Kaspersky software by its federal agencies as it was thought that Russian intelligence agencies were exploiting it.
A group of analysts at InformNapalm, which started after Russia took over Crimea in 2014, made claims after carefully studying 100 gigabytes of data stolen from a Russian company called Albatross, which was stolen by Cyber Resistance activists. This company reportedly worked with Iran to make spy drones for Russia.
Kaspersky has had connections to the project since 2018, when a group of six people jointly formed ALB-search with the purpose of participating in a competition to develop drone technologies for search and rescue missions.
Later on, Nikita Kalmykov, who was a member of the group, founded Albatross, and two other members of the group, Konstantin Spiridonov and Alexey Florov, also held top positions at the company.
Two more members of the team, Vladimir Turov and Vladimir Kleshnin, joined Kaspersky, and while they were employed there, they worked on the spy drone projects of Albatross. Turov has been leading the Antidrone Platform at Kaspersky since 2018, which is focused on airspace security and can detect autonomous aircraft flying around and can also respond to them in the secured airspace.
Albatross’s reliance on Kaspersky’s neural networks
According to the intelligence group InformNapalm, the team also registered a patent for fixed-wing autonomous vehicles that can locate missing persons, and it is the same patent that Albatross flaunts at presentations.
An Albatross slide deck that was part of the stolen documents shows the close relationship that Kaspersky and Albatros have for developing software for the drones, which proves that Albatross drones relied on Kaspersky software for operations. The slide deck says,
“Kaspersky Lab uses Albatross drones as a carrier for its intelligent systems,” and “as part of a partnership with the Russian aircraft manufacturer Albatross, solutions of Kaspersky Neural Networks have already been installed on the Albatross M5 fixed-wing drones and Albatross D1 industrial quadcopters.”
Source: Theregister.
The mentioned neural networks were supposedly developed by a Kaspersky team that also included Turov and Kleshnin. To make the matter clear, it can be said that Albatross started as a startup for rescuing and spotting lost people with the help of drones, but it evolved into a maker of UAVs for military purposes that Russia is using in the Ukraine war.
InformNapalm also says that because of the connection between the two companies, the Kaspersky antivirus business should also come under sanctions as it can still do business to support its development of products that Russia can use against Ukraine.
The Register said that Kaspersky denied most of the claims made in the report and said that it worked with Albatorss but not on final products; the work was limited to lab level, which was mainly experimental and noncommercial, and most of the allegations are false.
