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Kaspersky OS

eugene.kaspersky.com

101–110 of 290 posts

Re: Kaspersky OS

#101

Only use it if you want to send all of your information to FSB (modern KGB). Evgeniy Kasperskiy has friends in government, police and FSB. He also is apologet of state surveillance.

We should look at this as it really is: Russia is super paranoid, and increasingly isolationist. Putin is also realizing that all of his technology comes from western companies, and they are trying to build their own, so that they aren't so reliant on Cisco routers, Intel CPUs, and Apple smartphones.

This will be a russian OS, designed to allow russian companies to buy routers, switches, and firewalls that are not made by western companies.

It has to scare the shit out of russia to think that if they did have a war with the west, they would lose their access to the technology needed to run their businesses. This is a first step towards trying to build some type of technological independence from the west.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#102
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> writes their own kernel 100% matching their need, prove its validity via formal verification It's hard enough for one organisation to do this, given the fairly specialised set of skills it requires. Let alone every IoT vendor. There's no reason to massively replicate this kind of work. People would be better off building an ecosystem around sel4.

Agree, I'd like exactly to look closer inside "hard enough". First, it depends on each specification -- what if the hardware is much-much smaller (IoT) and task to perform is well defined? It is hard today primarily because the required skill set becomes less and less current, but it is all demand-driven, it was not so some time ago. Secondly, it could be replicated to some extent only -- for example, verified librar…

> what if the hardware is much-much smaller (IoT) and task to perform is well defined?

Anything IoT needs a full network stack at least, and usually a set of radio drivers for WiFi, 6lowpan, Zigbee, Bluetooth or whatever. That usually amounts to quite a lot of software, which in the case of the radio stuff is often proprietary and patent-encumbered.

Asking the hardware vendors is a dead end. You might as well ask for a pony while you're at it, you're not going to get it either.

"Verified libraries" would necessarily be written against a particular OS interface and its guarantees. I'm not even sure how this process would work in terms of formal verification; even sel4 is forced to make assumptions about hardware.

The reason why you get bad Linux ports with no source and universal default passwords is simply cost. Customers do not incorporate security into their purchasing decisions - or they wouldn't buy these things - so this is what we get.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What choice do we have? All other operating systems send your information either to NSA or China. State surveillance reigns supreme.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux don't.

The Intel ME and and AMD PSP are still executing proprietary code on an independent processor in your CPU package all the time, with full system access.

Linux cannot do anything about it.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#105
post #93

Only use it if you want to send all of your information to FSB (modern KGB). Evgeniy Kasperskiy has friends in government, police and FSB. He also is apologet of state surveillance.

What choice do we have? All other operating systems send your information either to NSA or China. State surveillance reigns supreme.

That's a bizarre accusation and very easy to fact-check for yourself. It's trivial to run a packet sniffer and see all the information being sent out of your network.

I know for sure that my apple and my linux boxes aren't making any network connections that I don't understand.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#106

Only use it if you want to send all of your information to FSB (modern KGB). Evgeniy Kasperskiy has friends in government, police and FSB. He also is apologet of state surveillance.

We should look at this as it really is: Russia is super paranoid, and increasingly isolationist. Putin is also realizing that all of his technology comes from western companies, and they are trying to build their own, so that they aren't so reliant on Cisco routers, Intel CPUs, and Apple smartphones. This will be a russian OS, designed to allow russian companies to buy routers, switches, and firewalls that are not ma…

There is no reason why both cannot be true. You should expect that there are FSB accessible backdoors/0-days.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#107
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux don't.

The Intel ME and and AMD PSP are still executing proprietary code on an independent processor in your CPU package all the time, with full system access. Linux cannot do anything about it.

Yeah you only FTrace your entire networking stack at watch if it ever sends/receives packets without your knowledge. Or use libpcap and accomplish the same task. Or use a user space packet stack stack and disable your default network interface.

I get not everything on the system is pure FOSS. But every binary ball isn't NSA spyware. If you assume that is true, you literally cannot use ANY computer.

FOSS OS's make it nothing but a question of work-hours to do the full trust but verify paradigm.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#108
post #90

Only use it if you want to send all of your information to FSB (modern KGB). Evgeniy Kasperskiy has friends in government, police and FSB. He also is apologet of state surveillance.

Any reliable source? This is quite the accusation

Here's a Wikipedia summary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kaspersky#Alleged_affil...

Re: Kaspersky OS

#109
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux don't.

The Intel ME and and AMD PSP are still executing proprietary code on an independent processor in your CPU package all the time, with full system access. Linux cannot do anything about it.

Neither can Kasperky OS for the matter.

Re: Kaspersky OS

#110
post #13

It sounds very interesting, for sure, but the announcement is a little thin on details. The OS is apparently based around a microkernel. Which sounds good, but AFAIK, microkernels are comparatively popular in the embedded space (think QNX, L4) - so that choice is not in itself revolutionary. They mention signatures, and it kind of sounds as if the OS will refuse to execute any non-signed code. Again, sounds like a go…

Stuxnet was signed, but not by any governmental entity (the certificates were stolen from hardware vendors). There would be no reason for Kaspersky to trust third party certificates, so unless Kaspersky manages to insecurely store their private key(s), it's a very good measure.

Of course, iOS has AMFI which is supposed to enforce code signing, but it doesn't always work...

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