Clients of Kaspersky antivirus in the USA came upon in the previous couple of days that their cybersecurity software program was mechanically changed with a brand new one referred to as UltraAV, in accordance with a number of prospects who posted on social media. And among the prospects stated that they had no concept 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 other threads. 

A reseller, who till not too long ago offered Kaspersky merchandise previous to the latest gross sales ban, instructed TechCrunch that he was left “irritated” by the transfer to mechanically take away Kaspersky software program and change it with a completely totally different antivirus. A former senior U.S. authorities cybersecurity official stated that this was an instance of the “large danger” posed by the entry granted by Kaspersky software program. 

It’s value noting that, however, other customers did report receiving an electronic 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 sales of Kaspersky software 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 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 page on its site saying that Kaspersky prospects utilizing Home windows would get the brand new antivirus with their current subscription and that “no action is required.” It’s unclear when the web page was printed. The earliest version 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 spot in safety upon Kaspersky’s exit from the market,” a Kaspersky worker solely named Vadim M. wrote in an official company forum on Saturday.

Neither Pango nor Kaspersky responded to requests for remark, looking for to make clear whether or not all Kaspersky prospects have been notified of the transition straight. 

Avi Fleischer, a buyer of Kaspersky, instructed TechCrunch that he additionally was shocked by the transition.

“I’m irritated at Kaspersky,” stated Fleischer, who can also 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 just accept UltraAV or not.” 

“They need to NEVER push software program onto somebody’s pc 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, said in a post on X that, “Customers have been ‘migrated’ — software program uninstalled and a completely totally different product was put in automagically,” including that Kaspersky “had whole management of your machine.”