Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 139 posts

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

#51

Post by gozur88 »

orf wrote: post #43
X86BSD wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> away with Benghazi Wasn't Benghazi investigated to death by the right for an absurdly long time? Why do you think nothing was found? I'm not sure if your willfully trolling or actually believe the misinformation you are spreading, and I'm not sure which is worse.

>Wasn't Benghazi investigated to death by the right for an absurdly long time? Why do you think nothing was found?

Didn't all the people except Hillary (who lied to the committee) take the 5th? Do you think that might be a reason?

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

#52

Post by jonknee »

cisanti wrote: post #7
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.

The witch hunt has gone so crazy that even the author of faceapp than removes make up was somehow tied to "Russian troll farms". It's sickening.

What's your source for this? I remember they got a lot of flack for introducing race changing filters (AKA digital blackface). Thinking that was a good idea is pretty sickening.

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

#53

Post by orf »

gozur88 wrote: post #51
orf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> away with Benghazi Wasn't Benghazi investigated to death by the right for an absurdly long time? Why do you think nothing was found? I'm not sure if your willfully trolling or actually believe the misinformation you are spreading, and I'm not sure which is worse.

>Wasn't Benghazi investigated to death by the right for an absurdly long time? Why do you think nothing was found? Didn't all the people except Hillary (who lied to the committee) take the 5th? Do you think that might be a reason?

> Didn't all the people except Hillary (who lied to the committee) take the 5th?

No.

It's pretty simple:

> Benghazi investigated for years

> Longest congressional investigation in history

> Multiple reports find nothing

> Hillary is guilty she escaped justice!! Investigate Benghazi!!

And at the same time:

> Russian collusion investigated for 10 months

> No published reports, investigation not concluded

> several inditements already

> This is a witch hunt of the highest degree to keep you distracted from uranium, emails and Benghazi!!!!

Wake up.

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

#54

Post by whoopdedo »

odiroot wrote: post #37
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.

Watching US situation from outside it's seems there's an urgent need for some kind of a bad guy. Kaspersky is just easy target and apparently three-letter-agencies have means to steer the media to pursue this direction.

Remember last year when Kaspersky accused[1] Microsoft of anti-trust for disabling their antivirus? And Microsoft admitted it was done in the name of compatibility.[2] Something about that seemed fishy to me because none of the other AV venders were complaining. Was Microsoft told to intentionally sabotage Kaspersky?

[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3141470/security/kaspe...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/20/15836208/microsoft-kasper...

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

#55

Post by FeepingCreature »

matt4077 wrote: post #34
55555 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm confused, but did you mean to add a footnote/citation ([0])?

Yeah. Just google for Polonium. They murdered someone, and made sure the victim, and the whole world, knew exactly who was behind it.

Usually if you leave a footnote[0], you have to actually include the note in the footer of your comment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_(typography) Like so.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

gozur88 wrote: post #51
orf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> away with Benghazi Wasn't Benghazi investigated to death by the right for an absurdly long time? Why do you think nothing was found? I'm not sure if your willfully trolling or actually believe the misinformation you are spreading, and I'm not sure which is worse.

>Wasn't Benghazi investigated to death by the right for an absurdly long time? Why do you think nothing was found? Didn't all the people except Hillary (who lied to the committee) take the 5th? Do you think that might be a reason?

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by peterwwillis »

Two things this article just ZOOMS over but are critical:

1. If Israelis were "burrowed deep" in Kaspersky's network, sure, Russian hackers may have been, too - but so could have anyone else. Also the Israelis are not exactly fans of the Russians, and are our primary (sole?) Middle East ally, so there is bias and uncertainty there.

2. From the article:

"The allegations, all attributed to unnamed officials with no supporting documentation, helped explain why the US Department of Homeland Security in September took the unprecedented step of directing all US agencies to stop using Kaspersky products and services"

So we're not even mentioning how in May the Senate was already taking Kaspersky to task, and there were rumors of them getting the boot even in 2016? The allegations don't explain shit, they are just another facet of a year long political battle between the American legislative branch and intelligence services against Kaspersky.

It is plausible that the U.S. government made these files go through Kaspersky just so they could have leverage over them for a deal they wanted (like spying on their own country), or that a stupid contractor put them on their laptop along with Kaspersky AV, and the NSA got caught with it's pants down, they're using the Israelis to try to cover the embarrassment. This is not out of the ordinary behavior for an intelligence service.

Look at it this way: flip the roles. Would Russia try a play on their contracts with a U.S. company to further their goals?

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

#58

Post by willstrafach »

grandalf wrote: post #48
JohnStrange wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find hilarious about this whole story is that the US government allowed highly intrusive software from a non-allied country on government machines in the first place. It seems fairly reasonable to restrict software on machines that potentially hold confidential information (incl. e.g. patient data, payrolls) to software that is produced in the same country or by companies of close allies, or at least by compan…

> the US government allowed highly intrusive software from a non-allied country on government machines in the first place. This is the key point. Also, the US Government was recently found to have fake Kaspersky SSL certs.

> Also, the US Government was recently found to have fake Kaspersky SSL certs.

This is not true. An old commit for a leaked implant included example client certificates, which were invalid and self-signed, used to disguise C2 communications as anti-virus updates to avoid scrutiny. Part of the system involved copying fields from valid certificates into self-signed (invalid ones) so the traffic would not look suspicious.

If they actually had fake/spoofed SSL certificates valid for Kaspersky’s domain, that would be entirely different.

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

#59

Post by tryingagainbro »

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…

>>rather than Kaspersky doing anything malicious

I'm sorry but Kaspersky gets NSA files and deletes them, instead of handing them to FSB? Nope, I don't believe it. You can get away with xx murders in exchange for that

And that's the most generous assumption--that Kaspersky wasn't looking for them

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

#60

Post by indubitable »

matt4077 wrote: post #5

Kasperky's story here seems completely believable. Yet the US government's warnings also seem reasonable even given just the facts everyone agrees on. I guess the larger lesson may be how Russia's failure to establish rule of law makes it impossible to run a business that depends on trust. The US should take note: if they succeed in breaking Apple et al's attempts to protect their users, pretty soon the only countrie…

It's interesting to analyze your comment for a minute. Consider that PRISM was revealed in 2013. It is a far reaching surveillance program carried out by the NSA with the assistance of numerous major tech players, including Apple. [1] It's unveiling was certainly an embarassment both for the companies involved as well as the NSA. And here we are in 2017, just 4 years later, with you stating that users can "trust" companies, including Apple by name, to implicitly protect their data from government overreach.

Essentially, that the government is publicly running a campaign to openly access user data does not in any way change the fact that they already have covert access to that data in private. Why are they doing this? One can only speculate, but I'd imagine one reason is that unlawfully obtained information and evidence is not admissible in court leading to all sorts of fun things like parallel construction. [2]

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Post reply on HN