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December 28, 2017 04:00 am

FBI Software For Analyzing Fingerprints Contains Russian-Made Code, Whistleblowers Say

schwit1 shares an exclusive report via BuzzFeed: The fingerprint-analysis software used by the FBI and more than 18,000 other U.S. law enforcement agencies contains code created by a Russian firm with close ties to the Kremlin, according to documents and two whistleblowers. The allegations raise concerns that Russian hackers could gain backdoor access to sensitive biometric information on millions of Americans, or even compromise wider national security and law enforcement computer systems. The Russian code was inserted into the fingerprint-analysis software by a French company, said the two whistleblowers, who are former employees of that company. The firm -- then a subsidiary of the massive Paris-based conglomerate Safran -- deliberately concealed from the FBI the fact that it had purchased the Russian code in a secret deal, they said. The Russian company whose code ended up in the FBI's fingerprint-analysis software has Kremlin connections that should raise similar national security concerns, said the whistleblowers, both French nationals who worked in Russia. The Russian company, Papillon AO, boasts in its own publications about its close cooperation with various Russian ministries as well as the Federal Security Service -- the intelligence agency known as the FSB that is a successor of the Soviet-era KGB and has been implicated in other hacks of U.S. targets. Cybersecurity experts said the danger of using the Russian-made code couldn't be assessed without examining the code itself. But "the fact that there were connections to the FSB would make me nervous to use this software," said Tim Evans, who worked as director of operational policy for the National Security Agency's elite cyberintelligence unit known as Tailored Access Operations and now helps run the cybersecurity firm Adlumin. The FBI's overhaul of its fingerprint-recognition technology, unveiled in 2011, was part of a larger initiative known as Next Generation Identification to expand the bureau's use of biometrics, including face- and iris-recognition technology. The TSA also relies on the FBI fingerprint database.

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