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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

#261

Post by saiya-jin »

makomk wrote: post #236
tablespoon wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is: how do you run a business that has offices and physical assets in , without being at least partially beholden to the government? The problem with this kind of Mad Libs argument is that it falsely implies the substitutions are equivalent when they're not. Also your quote shears away the context of the original statement that made it meaningful.

There definitely seems to be at least a little truth to that argument, though. Over the years Kaspersky has found and documented a whole bunch of seemingly US government linked malware whilst their Western competitors just haven't, and I think there's at least some evidence this is intentional on the part of those other companies.

It may be, or his company is really that good above others (I don't think he personally was involved in any of this, but hired good enough people to do so). I tend towards former but have no proof either way.

I still have a serious and (since Russia-started a war in Ukraine) permanent problem with him - as pointed elsewhere [1] he went through KGB school - voluntarily, he was actually active KGB intelligence just like Putin. At those places, your objective morals go down the drain very fast and for good. And obviously both are still very close, he approves overall totalitarian direction of Russia and often spoke against 'too much freedom' in the west and on internet.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140423055434/http://www.wired....

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

#262

Post by dralley »

toyg wrote: post #182
eunos wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They did the right thing - finding suspiciously malicious code is their job. Not their fault the user was an idiot, spooks PEBKAC is still PEBKAC.

Sure, but the allegation was that soon after Kasperky detected the NSA tools on his system he was hit with a very targeted cyberattack. IIRC that's where the allegations of Kasperky's involvement with the Russian government came in.

And anecdotally there were a lot of MSPs in /r/sysadmin claiming that every single one of their Kasperky customers would be hit by ransomware while few if any of their other customers were.

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

#263

Post by LeoPanthera »

sjmm1989 wrote: post #155

So... let's say a person still wanted to use an Antivirus product anyways, despite not really trusting them due to reasons like this article here; or anything you can say about Norton, etc, etc. What would you all suggest? Aside from McAfee, Norton and of course Kaspersky. I'm all ears. Some helpful hints though might be: 1. I don't want it giving me pop-ups constantly to remind me of a sale they are having. 2. It ca…

For home use, Sophos Home: https://home.sophos.com/en-us

(Disclosure: I used to work for Sophos, I no longer do.)

It's a good mix of traditional antivirus, antimalware, and privacy tools. It's also available for Macs.

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

#264

Post by ajsnigrutin »

viktorcode wrote: post #193
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.

So can microsoft, adobe, google, etc. Even without them, NSA can intercept the hardware and put their software on those boxes... wikileaks showed a bunch of stuff NSA did.

If you're a valuable target, it's basically choosing if you want to be spied on by the russians or the americans. (or installing linux, and hoping for the best).

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

#265

Post by ajsnigrutin »

dahdum wrote: post #106
cf141q5325 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> 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) You should have the same concerns about software from anywhere, including the US. I believe it's a couple orders of magnitude more likely I'd be harmed by Russian government malicious code than any other nation. Russia is in crisis, striking indiscriminatel…

> Russia is in crisis, striking indiscriminately, and has no reputation left to lose. So that's where my concern lies.

With wikileaks, we've seen, that americans did all of the same things, you now try to accuse russia of potentialy doing.

I'm not saying russians won't do it, but americans already did it.

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

#266

Post by ajsnigrutin »

devwastaken wrote: post #169
cf141q5325 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Russia can do it without any backlash from their citizens. U.S. can't do it to their own citizens without backlash. Differences in representation of population means different incentives.

Backlash after the wikileaks? What backlash? FISA courts? Gag orders?

Just call the "other guys" terrorists, nazis, whatever, and americans can occupy and bomb whatever country they want (and they did that to many countries) withot any backlash. Gone are the days of the hippies and anti-war-anything... sadly.

I was kinda hoping for a "revolution" in one of the european countries (eg france) during covid, where people would "remove" the current government, and make the other governments atleast worry a bit when their people get mad... but sadly, not even that.

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

#267

Post by ajsnigrutin »

kergonath wrote: post #172
confiq wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except when it comes to force companies out of the USA because of "security reasons". I think Russia is using similar tactics, does it?

“That guy who killed someone is not that bad, because the other guy punched someone and everybody seems happy with that”. Bullshit. The US is an imperialist, sometimes oppressive pseudo-democracy, but nothing like that mafia-run kleptocracy.

This is a very americo-centric view....

Most of the world consideres americans the "bad guys", and a lot worse than the russians. You can start with southern america and middle east. Then the balkans (where putin is doing the same as you guys did with kosovo). Even parts of africa would have a say.

Here in the balkans, people were actively rooting for trump in the last two elections, because they were afraid Hillary would start a new war here...

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

#268

Post by lizardactivist »

I'm happy with what I consider to be the most competent AV suite available, made by a team of researchers that is second to none.

If the U.S. accusations are ever proven to be true, I will reconsider. But I'm not holding my breath, since the U.S. has time and again been proven to be guilty themselves of the very thing they accuse others of, and refuse to provide any proof of.

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

#269

Post by laurent92 »

bboozzoo wrote: post #245
naoqj wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

That's funny as the thread is about contrasting Russia with US, but I don't seen to recall US invading any neighboring countries under the false pretense of defending some minorities.

I remember a woman testifying that they were killing babies in Kuwait, and she was later discovered as being the daughter of an ambassador. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

I remember the late Colin Powell brandishing proof of WMD in Iraq at the UN Counsel. He will never land in the TPI, neither will the UN Counsel for basing a judgment upon unverified allegation causing dozens of thousands of illegal killings by the US army.

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

#270

Post by dc-programmer »

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 Stuxnet association seems completely basis, and you do not provide any evidence for the assertion. There were multiple firms and individuals responsible for the discovery, reverse engineering, and attribution of Stuxnet, so you are overplaying their involvement.

This decision was certainly made by a bureaucrat who may not even know about Stuxnet. It’s simple risk mitigation. Why even take the chance Kaspersky is a malicious entity? It’s not important software.

Some of the conspiracy theories people throw out around here…

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