Of course they have. They are a business based in Moscow. I would be surprised if they hadn't. They are just too attractive a target for the Kremlin not to try to co-opt. No idea how any US corporate security team could justify working with them, quite honestly.
Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good and Evil are 100% relative to your position. No one ever thinks they are they bad guy.
It's not that simple by a long shot. Minus any information or critical thinking, no one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy. I'm an American and I can tell you no end of past and present instances in our history in which we were the bad guys in a particular situation. I don't defend America if I think the US government is taking a morally, ethically, or intellectually wrong position, or if the US government does…
Hindsight is always 20/20, definitely. In the present, in the act of behaving, taking action or pursing cause no one believes they are a bad guy. To my original point about the behavior of Russia (my response to the other poster, I just realized you were the other poster ...), Im sure they believe they are acting in their best interest for their own good. So to be shocked by Russia's behavior from their standpoint is useless, just as to evaluate the US's behavior over the past 10 years. No one seems themselves as a bad guy in the present.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#43Unlike US-based security companies?
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#44The article seems a bit hyperbolic to me. Expecting a major Russian cybersecurity company not to have any business with its own government is a bit naive. Not all government business is spying and unlawful activities. From what Bloomberg is sharing with us (I couldn't find those emails), Kaspersky is developing a software solution with defensive and offensive capabilities as well as providing consultancy services to…
Here's the actual quote from Kaspersky's email about his firm's projects with the FSB: > The project includes both technology to protect against attacks (filters) as well as interaction with the hosters (‘spreading’ of sacrifice) and active countermeasures (about which, we keep quiet) and so on Does anybody know what "interaction with the hosters" means?
Presumably it refers to building relationships with various hosting companies around the world so Kaspersky can get datacenters to seize servers for them without court orders.
This is relatively common practice for many DCs, if you're a "bad" client they'll privately hand your stuff to AV companies for analysis.
I also guess this includes practical advice like "FFS never turn abusive customers servers off, they could be encrypted"
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the Russians are the bad guys. /s
I didn't believe this as a child in the '80s, but in the last 10 years at least, Putin's Russia has been freaking horrifying to me. So yeah, they aren't the world's only bad guys, and they're probably not the worst, but it's not for lack of trying. Putin's vision of Russia doesn't even try to avoid looking comically sinister. I honestly don't see how anyone who isn't wrapped up in self-interested religious or ethnic…
>I didn't believe this as a child in the '80s, but in the last 10 years at least, Putin's Russia has been freaking horrifying to me.
In what way, and what's "comically sinister"? Russia mostly deals with stuff in their borders. The "worst" they did was intervene in a neighbor-hooding part of Ukraine, with 60% citizenry of Russian ethnicity, who even had a referendum for preferring to unite with Russia, and that only after the legitimate government of that country was toppled by a ragtag coalition that included bona-fide neo-nazis. Hardly the stuff of "world domination"...
The US in the last 20 years has occupied 2 sovereign countries, bombed several others, and turned most of them from stable regimes into hell holes of civil war and militant islamist. Plus has been pushing NATO all the way into Russia's borders (and all the global surveillance stuff, drone killings, Guantanamo, etc). And to pre-empt any knee jerk reactions, that's not "whataboutism" (sic), that's perspective.
In their internal policies, they are what they always were: liberal in some aspects, conservative in others (e.g. religion, homosexuality, etc). But making them into bad guys for that stuff is rich when half of one's own country agree with those two, or up until last 1-2 decades most states had laws against "sodomy", or there's still things like the death penalty or the worlds lead (with huge difference from the second) in incarcerations.
I love the US (country and people) and haven't even ever been to Russia (though I like their literature, spirit and oddball society), but as an outside observer, can't stand the hypocrisy.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good and Evil are 100% relative to your position. No one ever thinks they are they bad guy.
It's not that simple by a long shot. Minus any information or critical thinking, no one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy. I'm an American and I can tell you no end of past and present instances in our history in which we were the bad guys in a particular situation. I don't defend America if I think the US government is taking a morally, ethically, or intellectually wrong position, or if the US government does…
>When people deflect criticism of their country by saying some other country is just as bad, they're totally missing the point. Saying that everyone does shitty things still doesn't make it OK for anyone to do shitty things.
No, but if one's country does 10x the shitty things, they don't get to single out the other country as "evil".
>If all you've got is whataboutism, you are literally trying to defend indefensible behavior by pointing out instances of other countries engaging in indefensible behavior.
And if you don't see things in perspective and weight them, then you single out some "indefensible behavior", and ignore other because its by the side one happens to belong too.
Countries, like humans, aren't perfect. But we don't get to pick and chose what's indefensible pointing to single person for what many do. Especially if we always conveniently point to the other person.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#47Of course they have. They are a business based in Moscow. I would be surprised if they hadn't. They are just too attractive a target for the Kremlin not to try to co-opt. No idea how any US corporate security team could justify working with them, quite honestly.
Do you also have no idea how any non-US security team can justify working with Microsoft?
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#48As always, any implication that all closed-source software, regardless of company, suffers from similar issues, is conveniently absent. Just as it was during the VW emissions scandal - it's the cheating that was problematic, not that consumers are effectively in the dark about how most of their products operate, and deliberately prevented (successfully or not) from finding out (personally, or done on their behalf by…
I think the Bloomberg reporting goes beyond that. They claim lots of networking hardware comes pre-installed with Kaspersky software that the end-user may not even be aware of. I can't find specific products so I don't know whether this is just Dell-preinstalled crapware that can be wiped with an OS reinstall or some sort of embedded device where the end user has no interface to disable/uninstall it.
Seeing how horrible and intrusive their endpoint AV is, I can't imagine them "sneaking" any of their products into anything.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's entirely unfair. We know that the Russian government sponsors cyber attacks. They're not the only ones, we know the USA and China and North Korea and Israel and probably every other country does too. It all has to be taken into account. If I buy Cisco gear, what's the likelihood that it has an NSA tap in it? [1] If I buy Check Point gear, what's the likelihood that it has a Mossad tap in it? [2] If…
Your point is undermined by your links. The first describes a remote network exploit , which is not developed by coöperation or coercion. Exploits take advantage of a software vulnerability to insert additional capabilities (espionage). I think you wanted to find a link describing the process of interdiction , which was implied to exist in the Snowden documents. The second link is just a public denial by Check Point.…
The links aren't meant to prove there is some kind of government-planted backdoor, but rather to show the same kind of evidence Kaspersky is being charged with: rumors and whispers. And it's completely fair to judge based on that because every company is judged based on that.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
#50The article seems a bit hyperbolic to me. Expecting a major Russian cybersecurity company not to have any business with its own government is a bit naive. Not all government business is spying and unlawful activities. From what Bloomberg is sharing with us (I couldn't find those emails), Kaspersky is developing a software solution with defensive and offensive capabilities as well as providing consultancy services to…
Right. Why would anybody be surprised by this knowing full well that American companies do the same?
"Breaking news! The sky is blue in Russia too!"