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Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

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Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#111

Post by NelsonMinar »

_8j50 wrote: post #74
Maursault wrote: post #54

Ok, let's cut the crap. Is Kaspersky a dirtbag or not? I suspect not, but it is an unfortunate accident he was born in and runs his company from Russia, the government of which is a dirtbag, so, correct me if I am wrong, Kaspersky must be a dirtbag by association, but especially for discovering Stuxnet. Believable, but I think the real reasons Kaspersky is persona non grata is due to having discovered Stuxnet, and Ka…

Even american security companies have ties to the intelligence community. Kaspersky is no different. In most countries private sector pays more so state hackers work at places like Crowdstrike or Kaspersky after some time. Their relationship with the IC helps develop and share intelligence both ways.

There's an important difference: American security companies have ties to American intelligence. The concern here is Kaspersky has ties to Russian intelligence. If you're an American company or government agency and have to choose between the two the choice is pretty clear.

I have a lot of respect for Kaspersky and hope they are still independent. But "ties to intelligence" can come in many forms: deliberate, coerced, or via infiltration. We've seen similar issues here in the US. Sometimes companies work voluntarily with the FBI and NSA, sometimes they are infiltrated or tricked by them.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#112

Post by eunos »

tomc1985 wrote: post #82
Maursault wrote: post #54

Ok, let's cut the crap. Is Kaspersky a dirtbag or not? I suspect not, but it is an unfortunate accident he was born in and runs his company from Russia, the government of which is a dirtbag, so, correct me if I am wrong, Kaspersky must be a dirtbag by association, but especially for discovering Stuxnet. Believable, but I think the real reasons Kaspersky is persona non grata is due to having discovered Stuxnet, and Ka…

When was Kasepersky ever considered a dirtbag? That company has written a lot of technically in-depth security reports over various threats for a long time. AFAIK it's a (relatively) honest business, though sadly the target of American russophobia

I think there was an incident in which some NSA contractor had Kaspersky installed in their workstation and the heuristic caught up NSA tools https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/kaspersky...

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#114

Post by b0afc375b5 »

the_snooze wrote: post #33

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

I have not thought about 3rd party antivirus software in a long time. Granted my only use case for windows 10 is gaming, and any binary (or any file really) that I download goes straight to virustotal before I open it.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#115

Post by annoyingnoob »

hans1729 wrote: post #42
the_snooze wrote: post #33

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

It’s a thing in big orgs, where macros are enabled in excel and employees can be tricked into opening mail attachments. Windows defender should suffice, but like you said, from a compliance/insurance perspective it may me valuable to say “look, we scanned for signatures according to the latest knowledge of [insert vendor]”. Personally I think that it’s ridiculous that these huge orgs fail to address the actual underl…

I have personally watched Windows Defender fail to notice a real virus infection from a USB flash drive. The USB flash drive was plugged in and instantly Windows was infected - Windows Defender did nothing. You could then manually run a Windows Defender scan and it would find the infection but it would not prevent the infection.

I think one's need for a security product should match one's exposure to issues - it depends on your org. For a very long time I was not a fan of anti-virus, in 2022 I'm back to liking anti-virus (more like EDR these days).

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#116

Post by seventytwo »

Maursault wrote: post #54

Ok, let's cut the crap. Is Kaspersky a dirtbag or not? I suspect not, but it is an unfortunate accident he was born in and runs his company from Russia, the government of which is a dirtbag, so, correct me if I am wrong, Kaspersky must be a dirtbag by association, but especially for discovering Stuxnet. Believable, but I think the real reasons Kaspersky is persona non grata is due to having discovered Stuxnet, and Ka…

Your entire post is pure speculation.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#117

Post by BTCOG »

_8j50 wrote: post #74
Maursault wrote: post #54

Ok, let's cut the crap. Is Kaspersky a dirtbag or not? I suspect not, but it is an unfortunate accident he was born in and runs his company from Russia, the government of which is a dirtbag, so, correct me if I am wrong, Kaspersky must be a dirtbag by association, but especially for discovering Stuxnet. Believable, but I think the real reasons Kaspersky is persona non grata is due to having discovered Stuxnet, and Ka…

Even american security companies have ties to the intelligence community. Kaspersky is no different. In most countries private sector pays more so state hackers work at places like Crowdstrike or Kaspersky after some time. Their relationship with the IC helps develop and share intelligence both ways.

It's not just security companies. US ISPs are heavily tied to agencies and so are the large corps. The media is state ran just like Russia.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#118

Post by aaomidi »

mkbkn wrote: post #101
older wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kaspersky graduated from The Technical Faculty of the KGB Higher School in 1987. That was a definition of a dirtbag in Soviet time.

What he could have done then at that time? To not study? To remain illiterate?

I know right? Like what the hell kind of criticism is that lol.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#119

Post by Damogran6 »

the_snooze wrote: post #33

Is there any point in using antivirus these days anyway? I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists. How big of a threat are viruses compared to, say, rogue antivirus products themselves?

Our bog-standard business ultrabooks have been requested to perform a full disk scan each Friday. Which means their CPUs and Fans are running solid, most all Fridays.

I'm CERTAIN there are massive hidden costs in fan replacement and Laptop repairs and nothing useful discovered as a result.

Re: Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat and is banned by the FCC

#120

Post by jaywalk »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #56
legalcorrection wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, can you tell me why Windows Defender is inadequate? I also gather that Microsoft sells an enhanced version for businesses with needs beyond local machine antivirus.

I guess that's a fair question, as it does seem to suffice for most people. I have a few reasons: * Extensive use of Chinese sites, which are quite a mess. I think the risks of visiting that part of the Internet are much greater than someone engaged in more typical usage. * Features like firewall are useful for things other than protecting against direct hacks, and I use it to ensure privacy and occasionally even to…

The Windows Defender firewall is pretty sophisticated. I can't imagine what functionality you'd need from a local firewall that it doesn't offer.
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