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Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

reuters.com

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Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#41

Post by AnimalMuppet »

theworstshill wrote: post #33

Someone wants to push people off Kaspersky. Counter-intuitive as it is, everyone in the west should use eastern (russian/chinese) anti-viruses and OS, and vice versa. That way, it'll be harder for each government to abuse and spy on their own citizens since I doubt Kaspersy entertains any request from foreign govs.

I don't trust my (US) government not to spy on me. But I don't trust the Chinese or Russian government not to spy on me, either. I'm not sure that they have my interest at heart any more than my own government does, and maybe less.

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#42

Post by trhway »

igravious wrote: post #25
yetihehe wrote: post #20

The whole article sounds funny. "VirusTotal had no immediate comment." "[...], Kaspersky denied using this technique. It said it too had been a victim of such an attack in November 2012, when an "unknown third party" manipulated Kaspersky into misclassifying files [...]" "The former Kaspersky employees said Microsoft was one of the rivals [...] They declined to give a detailed account of any specific attack." "In a s…

Not a bit coincidental that said firm seems to be the only antivirus firm in recent memory (unless I'm mistaken) that seems to be able or willing to uncover government-level shenanigans. No, not a bit coincidental at all. edit: And of course this http://www.wired.com/2015/06/kaspersky-finds-new-nation-stat... from two months ago. First, security breach; now, an attack on their reputation?

>Not a bit coincidental that said firm seems to be the only antivirus firm in recent memory (unless I'm mistaken) that seems to be able or willing to uncover government-level shenanigans.

like in that joke (an American says "we have freedom - we can criticize Reagan freely", and Russian responds "we have freedom too as we can criticize Reagan freely too") - Kaspersky was pretty active in uncovering StuxNet, i.e. shenanigans of the US/Israel governments :)

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#43

Post by atmosx »

tptacek wrote: post #39
x5n1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure propaganda/fluff piece to damage the company. The media has been going hard against Kaspersky in coordination with government agencies.

Does Reuters often write "pure propaganda/fluff pieces"? Or is this piece special?

No, it just reports. The agencies and the governments make the agenda (unfortunately).

That said, Reuters IMHO is the top reporting authority worldwide along with AP.

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#44

Post by _0ffh »

striking wrote: post #27
r721 wrote: post #23

>In one technique, Kaspersky's engineers would take an important piece of software commonly found in PCs and inject bad code into it so that the file looked like it was infected, the ex-employees said. They would send the doctored file anonymously to VirusTotal. >Then, when competitors ran this doctored file through their virus detection engines, the file would be flagged as potentially malicious. If the doctored fil…

Hashes aren't the only thing that judge a file. Virus scanners today look for specific portions of files that look like malicious code, either by directly matching it or by tracing the code. Apparently some virus scanners traced too far into other parts of the executable's code, into the legitimate portions that are found as system components on computers today. It's a neat attack.

> Virus scanners today look for specific portions of files that look like malicious code, either by directly matching it or by tracing the code.

FYI virus scanners have been doing that for ~25 years.

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#45

Post by theworstshill »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41
theworstshill wrote: post #33

Someone wants to push people off Kaspersky. Counter-intuitive as it is, everyone in the west should use eastern (russian/chinese) anti-viruses and OS, and vice versa. That way, it'll be harder for each government to abuse and spy on their own citizens since I doubt Kaspersy entertains any request from foreign govs.

I don't trust my (US) government not to spy on me. But I don't trust the Chinese or Russian government not to spy on me, either. I'm not sure that they have my interest at heart any more than my own government does, and maybe less.

Thats true, but they can use your information in much less inventive ways. Hackteam, anybody?

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#46

Post by jessaustin »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41
theworstshill wrote: post #33

Someone wants to push people off Kaspersky. Counter-intuitive as it is, everyone in the west should use eastern (russian/chinese) anti-viruses and OS, and vice versa. That way, it'll be harder for each government to abuse and spy on their own citizens since I doubt Kaspersy entertains any request from foreign govs.

I don't trust my (US) government not to spy on me. But I don't trust the Chinese or Russian government not to spy on me, either. I'm not sure that they have my interest at heart any more than my own government does, and maybe less.

I don't consider myself at much risk for being locked up because some dumbass in a Russian "anti-terror" spy agency misinterprets a joke among friends. The Russians don't have the only "anti-terror" spy agencies staffed by dumbasses, however.

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#47

Post by throwawayaway »

tptacek wrote: post #39
x5n1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure propaganda/fluff piece to damage the company. The media has been going hard against Kaspersky in coordination with government agencies.

Does Reuters often write "pure propaganda/fluff pieces"? Or is this piece special?

Every day, nothing special about it:

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE6A840J20101109

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#48

Post by evook »

tptacek wrote: post #39
x5n1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure propaganda/fluff piece to damage the company. The media has been going hard against Kaspersky in coordination with government agencies.

Does Reuters often write "pure propaganda/fluff pieces"? Or is this piece special?

Reuters is pretty known for propaganda and deliberate disinformation of the public.

e.g. http://blogs.roosevelt.edu/hsilverman/files/2011/11/Reuters-...

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#49

Post by cpncrunch »

throwawayaway wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Reuters often write "pure propaganda/fluff pieces"? Or is this piece special?

Every day, nothing special about it: http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE6A840J20101109

I don't see how an interview with Bush about his book has anything to do with propoganda.

Re: Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals, say ex-employees

#50

Post by x5n1 »

evook wrote: post #48
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Reuters often write "pure propaganda/fluff pieces"? Or is this piece special?

Reuters is pretty known for propaganda and deliberate disinformation of the public. e.g. http://blogs.roosevelt.edu/hsilverman/files/2011/11/Reuters-...

The article is about how Reuters biases public perception in favor of Palestinians and it's written by Henry I. Silverman who may or may not have an agenda of his own. That's the thing, everyone has an agenda. Just because someone is calling someone out on something that does not mean that they themselves are not motivated by their own agenda.
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