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Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

arstechnica.com

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Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#21

Post by forapurpose »

The article contains a useful recap of the evidence so far regarding this particular Kapersky issue, but the news is Kerpersky's denial. I don't take the latter to mean too much either way; when you get into the world of intelligence, plausible denials are the norm, and corporations practice it pretty commonly too.

Of course the U.S. government had to remove Kapersky from its computers. Russian intelligence has been very aggressive; the U.S. can't assume they'd pass on the opportunity to utilize an opportunity this good: Antivirus is widespread and highly invasive - a confidentiality (and even integrity) violation utility, with access to all data and code on the system, that the user helpfully installs for you, and it comes with built-in remote updates and communication that the user fully approves of.

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#22

Post by philipov »

revelation wrote: post #20
r3bl wrote: post #3

I have to ask: Is there any concrete evidence against Kaspersky doing anything remotely concerning since this whole charade against them started in 2015 or is it still "they're Russian, so they must be doing something bad" scenario? EDIT: Fuck if I understand why people like JohnStrange, revelation and ryanlol are downvoted in their replies to this comment. They're on topic.

The best part of all of this is how there is all this media coverage on a fricking antivirus, but nobody seems all too concerned with the NSA losing more secrets. It's like incident #100, maybe Kaspersky is the KGB, good on them since they are clearly more competent than the NSA. Maybe we can poach them?

Stands to reason that the media coverage is a smoke screen to eat up attention on the issue. Easier to give people a boogeyman so they don't have as much energy to spend on noticing the really important problems.

And our media outlets will happily run with anything that produces those sweet clicks.

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#23

Post by [deleted] »

r3bl wrote: post #3

I have to ask: Is there any concrete evidence against Kaspersky doing anything remotely concerning since this whole charade against them started in 2015 or is it still "they're Russian, so they must be doing something bad" scenario? EDIT: Fuck if I understand why people like JohnStrange, revelation and ryanlol are downvoted in their replies to this comment. They're on topic.

[deleted]

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#24

Post by orf »

ryanlol wrote: post #19
ctrl-j wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... it was all over the news? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/technology/kaspersky-lab-...

You could write a very similar article about any AV company. I've personally been automatically scanning data shared by various¹ AV companies for sensitive documents. I only store files not detected as malware by any scanners, and filter out large usually boring files (i.e. videos, audio). I also make an effort to filter out publicly available documents by googling them. So far I've gathered over 20TB of data. So far…

How do you have access to this data? That sounds quite troubling

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#25

Post by rando444 »

Before this article was published I don't think it was alleged that Kaspersky ever did anything.

All the public knew is that allegedly Israel hacked Kaspersky and noticed the Russian government using Kaspersky's tools to try and dig out secret documents.

I mean who knows, maybe the Russian government had a backdoor that they were abusing, maybe they hacked Kaspersky themselves, or maybe they were just given access.

I would have given Kaspersky plausible deniability before this article.. now I just don't believe them.

At face value their explanation sounds reasonable.

However, the original claim is that the Israelis were watching in real-time as agents searched computers around the world for secret codenames [0]... which is a world away from the explanation given in the submitted article.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/technology/kaspersky-lab-...

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#26

Post by ryanlol »

orf wrote: post #24
ryanlol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could write a very similar article about any AV company. I've personally been automatically scanning data shared by various¹ AV companies for sensitive documents. I only store files not detected as malware by any scanners, and filter out large usually boring files (i.e. videos, audio). I also make an effort to filter out publicly available documents by googling them. So far I've gathered over 20TB of data. So far…

How do you have access to this data? That sounds quite troubling

It's readily shared among researchers and "researchers". I'm scraping multiple feeds, but virustotal for example is one of the easiest public ones to access.

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#27

Post by r721 »

rando444 wrote: post #25

Before this article was published I don't think it was alleged that Kaspersky ever did anything. All the public knew is that allegedly Israel hacked Kaspersky and noticed the Russian government using Kaspersky's tools to try and dig out secret documents. I mean who knows, maybe the Russian government had a backdoor that they were abusing, maybe they hacked Kaspersky themselves, or maybe they were just given access. I…

Also this part from WSJ article remains:

"For many months, U.S. intelligence agencies studied the software and even set up controlled experiments to see if they could trigger Kaspersky’s software into believing it had found classified materials on a computer being monitored by U.S. spies, these people said. Those experiments persuaded officials that Kaspersky was being used to detect classified information."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-scanned-network...

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#28

Post by JohnStrange »

r3bl wrote: post #3

I have to ask: Is there any concrete evidence against Kaspersky doing anything remotely concerning since this whole charade against them started in 2015 or is it still "they're Russian, so they must be doing something bad" scenario? EDIT: Fuck if I understand why people like JohnStrange, revelation and ryanlol are downvoted in their replies to this comment. They're on topic.

I suspect there is a secret background story, like every so often when intelligence agencies are involved. Maybe Kaspersky didn't cooperate with the NSA as much as they'd wished for, or Russian intelligence interfered to prevent this. It looks to me like somebody is holding a very special grudge against this company.

I'm merely speculating, of course. Personally, I never take ordinary public announcements or claims from intelligence agencies at face value, since they have plenty of reasons to lie and disinform. That doesn't entail that their secret reports are bogus, of course, and senate hearings are also reliable. I've followed the senate hearings close enough to be reasonably certain that the US intelligence community is right about the accusations concerning Russian meddling in politics in the US and the EU. But that's a different case, people were testifying under oath in front of senate committees and senators from both parties who went to meetings behind closed doors were also convinced of the (classified) evidence.

As for Kaspersky, the information is unreliable and my personal guess is that whatever happened wasn't their fault. If someone has malware on his machine, it's the job of the antivirus software to detect and analyze it. If at all, the story has increased my overall trust in the technical quality of Kaspersky software.

Another speculation that I find overall credible is that since Snowden's revelations there is some concerted effort to further discredit the NSA in order to weaken their ability to operate. If that's so, then this campaign seems to be quite successful.

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#29

Post by X86BSD »

ctrl-j wrote: post #11
X86BSD wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a witch hunt slash scapegoat. Just as is Russian “collusion” with trump. Absolutely zero evidence at all only unnamed sources and speculation. All the money wasted on this politics garbage sigh.

> Just as is Russian “collusion” with trump. Absolutely zero evidence at all only unnamed sources and speculation. Just out of curiosity, what makes you think there is zero evidence? How would we know what evidence Mueller's team has uncovered? How do you reconcile all of the interactions between the trump campaign and the various Russian entities involved?

None of which were illegal. There has been zero evidence uncovered or produced by anyone in 10 months.

This is nothing but a witch hunt to demonize some idiot the left hates.

It’s transparent and disappointing. While the left gets away with Benghazi and uranium one.

There is no justice only the decision of those in power.

Re: Kaspersky: Yes, we obtained NSA secrets. No, we didn’t help steal them

#30

Post by jrochkind1 »

orf wrote: post #6

So an NSA contractor or employee takes confidential/highly sensitive code and documents home and leaves it on their machine. They then install a pirated version of Office, after disabling their antivirus software which is telling them it is infected with a virus and preventing the installation. Seems like massive incompetence from this user rather than Kaspersky doing anything malicious, and those files where destine…

This is the best part:

"...found they contained malicious code from Equation Group..."

"Equation Group" is Kaspersky's label for a malware group believed to be NSA.

Kaspersky's software possibly then detected as malware the very confidential code the NSA contractor/employee illegally took home, ha!

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