Sep 24, 2024Ravie LakshmananAntivirus / National Security

Antivirus vendor Kaspersky has formally begun pulling back its offerings in the U.S., migrating existing users to UltraAV, effective September 19, 2024, ahead of its formal exit at the end of the month.

“Kaspersky antivirus customers received a software update facilitating the transition to UltraAV,” the company said in a post announcing the move on September 21.

“This update ensured that users would not experience a gap in protection upon Kaspersky’s exit from the market.”

The Russian company, which was banned from selling its software in the U.S. due to national security concerns, said it “worked closely” with UltraAV to ensure that the standards of security and privacy were maintained after the switch.

However, some users who experienced the update have taken to Kaspersky’s forums and Reddit, stating that Kaspersky’s software was automatically deleted and replaced by UltraAV without any prior notice.

UltraAV, in an FAQ, said “all Kaspersky U.S. users with a valid email address associated with their accounts received email communication detailing the transition process” starting September 5.

However, it appears that the notice reportedly failed to explicitly state that the switch of software in user systems would be an automatic process.

“I was using Kaspersky, didn’t realize they’d be shuffling us off to some rando [antivirus] in September,” one user wrote in a post on Reddit. “Nearly had a heart attack when I started my PC today and found a program I didn’t download.”

A U.S. company, UltraAV is part of Pango Group, which also offers several other VPN apps like UltraVPN, OVPN, and VPN360. It touts more than 25 million active users across its brands, and over 650 million lifetime users.

Update

Following the publication of the story, UltraAV shared the below statement with The Hacker News –

Following the Biden administration’s announcement that it would ban Kaspersky Labs (KL) from selling or updating antivirus software in the United States effective September 29, 2024, the company reached an agreement with Pango Group to automatically transition all U.S. Kaspersky customers to its UltraAV antivirus product. This effort was intended to minimize the risk that KL users would be left unprotected for any period of time following their mandatory exit from the market.

KL began communicating this transition to U.S. customers on September 5. All KL users with valid email addresses received direct communications and all users had access to transition notifications in-app, on MyKaspersky account pages, and via Kaspersky Labs’ webpages.

UltraAV is a mature technology, developed and improved for more than 20 years. It incorporates the latest threat intelligence and leverages advanced techniques including AI and sophisticated heuristics to detect malware. With Ultra AV, users will receive comparable protections to those they had with KL at the same pricing. Beyond traditional antivirus and VPN services, UltraAV will also include Identity theft protections, including transaction monitoring, real-time alerts for signs of fraud, lost wallet protection and $1M identity theft insurance. For a detailed comparison of features, please reference this chart.

Users seeking more information on the transition can visit Ultrasecureav.com/faq or reach out to UltraAV customer support.