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

Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

orca.security

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 135 posts

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#51

Post by quadrifoliate »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #44

I am grateful to Palo Alto for the C&D. I had them on my radar screen for possible consideration next year on a large project. Now I don't anymore. That's a bunch of money that will go to someone else. This is the price when you have to defend the technical aspects of your solution with lawyers.

Yep, they just dropped out of consideration as a firewall vendor for me in the near future. The money for this superfluous legal stuff is coming from somewhere, probably from the overinflated margins. Also no one wants to be sued by a company whose products you paid good money for.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#52

Post by unethical_ban »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #44

I am grateful to Palo Alto for the C&D. I had them on my radar screen for possible consideration next year on a large project. Now I don't anymore. That's a bunch of money that will go to someone else. This is the price when you have to defend the technical aspects of your solution with lawyers.

This is such an absurd take that I clicked your account to ensure you were not a troll.

PAN, for all their true issues, puts out some impressive products. There is a reason they have eaten Checkpoint and Cisco FirePOWER's lunch.

Hilariously, my company blocks the article because it is a non-approved TLD. But I challenge you to defend the lawyers and ethics of other large infosec players.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#53

Post by Jonnax »

Spivak wrote: post #47
paultopia wrote: post #27

Palo Alto networks also makes bossware so intrusive that it's basically malware. Their VPN software on MacOS, for example, collects tons of system data and starts itself persistently on reboot + cannot be quit unless the user happens to have much-more-technical-than-most-users levels of knowledge about things like sudo and the various plist files work. My own experience, in a couple Twitter threads: https://mobile.tw…

As much as I despise this kind of software as an end-user the data collection can be for above-board purposes and is required in certain regulatory domains. Zero excuse for being a shitty application though. In our case we were required to verify that any machine that connected to our VPN was sufficiently updated, had a backup taken, was running AV and was recently scanned for malware, and had disk encryption enabled…

Sure but it has no business doing this crap on university student's machines.

It's straight up malware that modifies things that can break your computer.

And it's not like they're going to offer support for fixing it.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#54

Post by unethical_ban »

3np wrote: post #46
hirundo wrote: post #31

Dear Palo Alto Networks: There is no way I would have watched that video if you hadn't demanded it be taken down. Now having watched it I can see why you want to hide it.

We were just in the process of surveying firewalls. PANW was high on the list, given the user experience. They are no longer on it since today.

I'll say this again, I said it elsewhere. And to clarify, I own no stock in PANW, I don't work for them, though I have years of experience managing PAN firewalls in a large deployment (and some experience with their competitors). My coworkers don't know my HN name so I'm saying this from the heart, not for kudos from meatspace.

As part of a team choosing a new technology for something, you really need to take a lot of things into consideration. This would be one thing your legal department would need to consider, undoubtedly. However, if you are trying to choose such a critical technology as your infosec stack, and you completely remove a company from a bakeoff because of a negative review (which this essentially is), then you are not running your bakeoff properly.

PA firewalls and systems are pretty freaking good. I haven't worked with Checkpoint for a long time, but hear they got good a few years back when PA started eating their lunch. FirePOWER is the devil, as is Cisco.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#55

Post by eternalban »

shuaavi wrote: post #36
kmeisthax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of a legal precedent and a general fact about contract law: 1. Installation and/or execution of software constitutes copying (the "RAM Copy Doctrine") which is only lawful if the person currently using the software has been licensed or sold the software 2. Licensing restrictions can restrict license holders from exercising rights they otherwise would have as a matter of law There is nothing prohibiting you fr…

Just google 'yelp law'. It isn't legal these days.

You mean CRFA?

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/con...

Did a court rule that CRFA trumps (npi) DeWitt's Clause?

https://dwheeler.com/essays/dewitt-clause.html

(IANAL)

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#56

Post by hinkley »

dylan604 wrote: post #21
robertab wrote: post #11

I'm curious as to what Palo Alto is concerned about with these videos. If they feel they are mis-represented, they can easily post their own videos in response. But no doubt, transparency is a necessity and cease-and-desist letters does no one any good.

Huh? If it causes the video giving bad reviews of their product to be taken down, the C&D letter does a lot of good for Palo Alto. Even if the review is accurate, if Palo Alto can force the review to go away it is a good day's work for that lawyer.

Unless you trigger the Streisand Effect.

But it looks like more people have upvoted this post than actually watched the video, so maybe that isn’t going to happen.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#57

Post by jlgaddis »

Dear Palo Alto Networks,

In response to your "Cease and Desist" letter of 4 September 2020 to Avi Shua of Orca Security, we refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram [0].

Sincerely,

The Internet

--

[0]: https://lettersofnote.com/2013/08/07/arkell-v-pressdram/

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#58

Post by fefe23 »

The title is deceptive.

OP is not some independent site doing a neutral review. This is a competitor pretending to be neutral (and doing a laughably bad job at it; the "referee" is their evangelist).

So they basically make a untrustworthy video that (surprise, surprise) comes to the conclusion that their product is better, provoke Palo Alto into a hamfisted knee-jerk response, and now try to drum up cheap publicity by posing as the victim.

I have always regarded Palo Alto's products as snake oil, so this is not a fan defending their team.

That said: This behavior of Orca is reprehensible and you should not reward them with your attention.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#59

Post by warhorse10_9 »

Jonnax wrote: post #53
Spivak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I despise this kind of software as an end-user the data collection can be for above-board purposes and is required in certain regulatory domains. Zero excuse for being a shitty application though. In our case we were required to verify that any machine that connected to our VPN was sufficiently updated, had a backup taken, was running AV and was recently scanned for malware, and had disk encryption enabled…

Sure but it has no business doing this crap on university student's machines. It's straight up malware that modifies things that can break your computer. And it's not like they're going to offer support for fixing it.

All of these things are actually configured by your university. They are configuration options for the firewall that enforces the portal. Blame your university IT, not Palo Alto.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#60

Post by azernik »

kobalsky wrote: post #28
codingdave wrote: post #3

Lawyers sending letters to discourage actions they do not like are fairly standard. I've had attorneys tell me that if you are not getting letters like this, you aren't making enough of an impact. And to be clear, this is just a letter - tossing one of these out just to see if it works is an easy tactic because many smaller organizations are terrified of litigation, and will cave to demands even if there is no legal…

> Do take the letters seriously... determine whether there are valid legal claims presented. But if there are not, it is a scare tactic, so don't stress over it. Is the validity of the legal claim that relevant? If deep pockets co. wants to sue you into oblivion can't they just drag the trial forever and make sure you go bankrupt from legal fees before reaching a judgement?

Depends how invalid the legal claim is. There are multiple points a judge can say "this is such obvious BS I'm cutting it off now" ("summary judgment").
Post reply on HN