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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

#191

Post by AniseAbyss »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #80
mrtnmcc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of legit potential concerns.. Russian govt could "nationalize" Kaspersky at any moment and push rogue updates.

Shouldnt i have the same concerns with software from the US? You dont really have to nationalize to force devs to push malicious code (looking at you Australia)

It's about probability. I mean I have my issues with US foreign policy but at the end of the day they are more friendly and reliable than Russia.

Yeah if the US ever goes rogue we're all doomed but then your antivirus software will be the least of your worries.

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

#192

Post by Melatonic »

KronisLV wrote: post #171
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 I'm open to being wrong here, but I'm under the impression that antivirus exists only to tick boxes in outdated security compliance checklists.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 surprises me how much many posters on Hacker News seem to be against using any sort of AV software - not even the built in Defender solution in Windows, if you have to use the OS for whatever reason, but i often see the sentiment expressed that supposedly the entire class of software is useless. What happened to defense in depth with all of the layers you can introduce? Surely if you run a Linux server, you might…

For Windows one of the best things you can do, AV or not, is to NOT make your daily driver account an administrator. Create an admin account with a secure password and then another standard user account for yourself and use that standard user for everything. When installing something you will need to put in your admin password but it is really not a big deal to do so. Massively reduces your chance of ransomware and all kinds of crapware.

Enabling protected folder access and process isolation in Windows 10 is also a good idea.

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

#193

Post by viktorcode »

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…

It doesn't matter. The fact is Kaspersky (the company) can be coerced by the Russian government to exploit their highly privileged systems access to millions of computers around the globe.

I don't expect Kaspersky (the person) to play hero under these circumstances.

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

#194

Post by gamblor956 »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #115
hans1729 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 depe…

MS Defender used to automatically scan USB devices when plugged in but that's not the default anymore (and AFAIK hasn't been for a few years since one of the major updates); you now have to enable it somewhere non-intuitive (like the Policy Editor?).

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

#195

Post by mumblemumble »

the8472 wrote: post #48
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?

> rogue antivirus products themselves? It's not just rogue AV software. Buggy, insecure AVs are a big problem too. They're attack surface! Especially when running parsers and interpreters for untrusted inputs in kernel space.

If I were a black hat, I think that the best gift I could hope for would be a 3rd-party program, likely developed on the cheap, whose entire purpose for existing is to sit in kernel space and promiscuously open Every. Single. File. in order to process its contents.

(Granted, I'm a complete layperson in computer security, so there's likely something I'm missing.)

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

#196

Post by mjevans »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #124
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…

The problem is: how do you run a business that has offices and physical assets in Russia, without being at least partially beholden to the Russian government? They have demonstrated that they are not shy about using gangster tactics. One could say that the same is true in the US, but I believe the degree matters. Although the US government and intelligence agencies will and do try to overreach, there is a strong lega…

I live in the USA, therefore I need to consider it as part of my threat model mostly in the blunders / withholding exploits (thanks CIA ~.~) senses. For everything else I try to vote informed and support a combination of the EFF, ACLU, and other organizations that can be better informed experts on the law and it's applications.

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

#197

Post by irrational »

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?

My company forces all of us to use a product called Zscaler. I have no idea if it is effective, but it is constantly running and uses the vast majority of my CPU. The degree to which is slows down my computer and slows down development is astonishing. I have to wonder, across the entire company, if the potential cost of stuff lost that zscaler supposedly protects us from is worth more than the real cost of lost productivity, not to mention whatever they are paying for zscaler itself.

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

#198

Post by stjohnswarts »

teh_klev wrote: post #85
henryw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering this too since Windows has built-in antivirus now. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/comprehensive-securi...

Windows has had "Microsoft Security Essentials" built-in for longer than I can remember (10+ years?). It's not a terrible thing and keeps out of your way and doesn't seem to bog your machine down. Unlike the steaming pile of crap that my work computer runs (EndPoint) that consumes 60-80% CPU when doing its weekly full scan for over an hour right in the middle of the working day. MSE is really all I've used since binn…

Took me a while to figure out why my browsers always seem to randomly pause for about 30 seconds. It's that piece of crap McCaffee. I can watch it's process go to 100% when the browser (firefox and vivaldi) freeze. It's garbage and I wish I could turn it off and just use MS AV but the IT staff swear by McAffee so I live with it.

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

#200

Post by xur17 »

naoqj wrote: post #187
edgyquant wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the entire point of their argument? The Russian government is objectively worse by any honest metric.

Quoted post unavailable.

Did you read the GGP?

> One could say that the same is true in the US, but I believe the degree matters. Although the US government and intelligence agencies will and do try to overreach, there is a strong legal and cultural tradition of exposing, resisting, and fighting these overreaches in the US. I don't see that in Russia.

> So, I would not be surprised to see the US strong-arming US companies, but they would do this with sham/flimsy legal cover. The result of non-compliance would be at worst asset seizure and/or imprisonment. Both of these can be examined and contested. I imagine that the penalty for non-compliance in the Russian system would max out at having an unfortunate accident. Gangsters all, but the level of gangsterism and possibilities for investigation/redress matter.

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