The US is taking aim at Russia's cyber industry

The US government's decision this week to ban all federal agencies from using software developed by elite cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labs could be the first salvo in a broader effort to take aim at Russia's cyber industry.

The order came from Elaine Duke, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, who gave federal agencies 90 days to get rid of all Kaspersky software from their networks, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The US intelligence community has long been wary of Kaspersky and its possible ties to the Kremlin.

probing

emerged as a central figure

In 2015, amassive cyberattack leveled against the country's power grid cut electricity to almost 250,000 Ukrainians. Cybersecurity experts linked the attack to IP addresses associated with Russia.

Since then, Wired magazine's Andy Greenberg reported, Ukraine has seen a growing crisis in which an increasing number of corporations and government agencies have been hit by cyberattacks in a "rapid, remorseless succession."

Officials also believe Russia may have beenbehind this summer's "Petya" cyberattackthat crippled countries and corporations across the globe.

Investigators have additionally linked Russia toattackson at least a dozen US nuclear facilities. The hacks, though confined to the enterprise side of the nuclear plants, raised red flags as they could be a preliminary step toward an attack against the US power grid, cybersecurity experts previously told Business Insider.

Perhaps most notably, the US intelligence community concluded that Russia was behind an elaborate and multi-faceted influence campaign aimed at tilting the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor. That effort included, among other things, cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and breaching US voting systems in as many as 39 states in an attempt to target and manipulate voter data.

A continued trend

Eugene Kaspersky, the firm's founder, accepted an invitation on Thursday to testify before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology over the security of his company's products. His appearance before the US Congress will mark the highest-profile attempt yet to address longstanding accusations that Kaspersky could be working as an arm of the Kremlin.