Fast-Glob

History

2025: Pentagon uses open source software developed by Yandex employee

The US Department of Defense regularly uses the Fast-Glob software utility created by Russian developer Denis Malinochkin, who is an employee of Yandex. The software is designed to search for files and folders according to certain patterns and is widely used among American military systems. The fact of the use of Russian software in the structures of the Pentagon was reported at the end of August 2025.

According to The Register, information on the use of the utility in the US military was provided by a specialized information security company Hunted Labs. The developer of the program operates under the pseudonym mrmlnc, which in itself does not indicate a connection with Russia or Russian IT companies.

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Фото: Freepik

The identity of the creator of Fast-Glob was established through a profile analysis on the GitHub platform, which indicates the place of residence in the Moscow region and labor activity in Yandex. Additional confirmation was a personal website associated with this nickname and containing identical information about the owner.

After publishing the material in The Register, the Russian programmer personally confirmed his authorship of the Fast-Glob utility. Malinochkin said that he is the only developer of this software product and no one has ever asked him to make potentially dangerous changes to the program code.

The developer stressed that no one asked him to manipulate Fast-Glob, make hidden changes to the project, or collect and distribute system data. According to him, open source is based on the trust and diversity of the participants in the developer community.

Statistics on the use of the utility demonstrate its high popularity in the IT community. According to Hunted Labs, Fast-Glob is downloaded more than 79 million times weekly and is used as part of over 5,000 public projects in addition to the systems of the US military.^[1]

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