Prague, March 9 (CTK) – The released WikiLeaks documents do not uncover any security holes in the Czech Avast firm and besides, they are two years old, Sinan Eren, Avast vice-president, told CTK on Thursday.
He was reacting to the information that Avast figures in the WikiLeaks documents as one of the vendors of security software on which the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) focused.
WikiLeaks has released about 8000 pages of documents on the CIA aggressive programme arsenal, with which the largest U.S. intelligence organisation can hack mobile telephones, smart TV sets and other electronic devices and use them to collect information.
“Avast is mentioned in the released documents just as other global security firms. However, the released documents do not reveal any security holes in Avast. In addition, they are publicly available documents and presentations from conferences, which are two years old,” Eren said.
The CIA may have two reasons for being interested in Avast, which is one of the biggest suppliers of security software in the world, Pavel Basta, CZ.NIC association’s security expert said.
“Avast supplies security solutions used by hundreds of millions of users the world over. From the point of view of the CIA, it could be interesting if it succeeded in cheating these security solutions so that they would not recognise the harmful software created by the CIA and at the same time continued to inform the users about other viruses,” Basta said.
“The other factor may be that like any other broadly spread software, the Avast products could serve the spread of harmful programmes if the CIA succeeded in finding a suitable abusable mistake in these products,” Basta added.
Avast, founded in 1988, focuses on the creation of security software and its anti-virus programmes protect more than 400 million computers and mobile devices in the world. Last year, it bought the rival Czech firm AVG.
