5 ms·

Kaspersky is aligned with Putin's FSB: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecurity-kaspersky-has-close-ties-to-russian-spies http://www.blo

Kaspersky is aligned with Putin's FSB: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecurity-kaspersky-has-close-ties-to-russian-spies http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecur... http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/ http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/ You'd be a little crazy to run this outside of Russia. I suspect there are more backdoors disguised as "vulnerabilities we knew nothing about, totally, its news to us!" This reads like a trivial overflow which would have been found with some basic testing. This is a common ploy with untrustworthy software. Maybe Kaspersky was safe to run once, but with Russia's new brazen anti-West attitude, its a liability now.

dubcanada 11y ago
Well obviously anti-Russia type arguments make sense, as it is a Russian product. But most of these "popular anti-virus" programs are riddled with issues. This is not just a Kaspersky thing, Norton has it's own set of issues, and so does McAFee. And I'm sure the others are not bullet proof.
- eli 11y ago
  Indeed, most of all software is riddled with issues
  - kbenson 11y ago
    Yes, but we should hold programs purporting to increase security to a higher standard.
  - jjuhl 11y ago
    Not most. All. All programs have bugs and most people can't write even a simple "hello world" program that doesn't contain bugs (in the program itself, the runtime or, underlying OS or even hardware firmware below it). Fact is: execute a program and there will be an exploitable bug somewhere. Fact of life. The system is fucked - royally!
- jgalt212 11y ago
  I guess it would be more correct to speak of hidden or embedded biases or conflicts of interest.
at-fates-hands 11y ago
I don't use their products and the place I used to work was a little surprised when I pointed out his multiple connections to the current regime. I also thought it was odd he always seemed to have no problem catching US nation state malware, but all of those Russian state cyber weapons other companies keep finding seem to allude him and his team. Coincidence?
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  Maybe he doesn't like polonium.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  I was reading about how Estonia and Ukraine were victims to all these client side hacks from the Russian government which Kaspersky magically couldn't detect. I think its pretty obvious they're in cahoots. I imagine these governments are no longer running Kaspersky. Brian Krebs also writes about popular malware that first does a check to see if its being run on a computer in Russia. If so, it stops running. There's a lot of government sponsored malware coming from Russia. There's a public private partnership to put profitable malware on non-Russian computers and Russian officials turn a blind eye due to corruption, bribes, etc. Its all fairly ugly.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Every security vendor is aligned with it's "host" nation, that is how business works. Not to mention that it's one of the only few sources for these types of enterprises to recruit from in the first place. Most of the security software coming out of Israel like Checkpoint goes even beyond that and it's actual code that was written in the IDF and was released for commercial use. The NSA also has a technology transfer program that enables commercialization of many technologies which were invented or developed by the NSA, they also release quite a abit of their TTP software as open source.
    - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
      I think you're certainly overstating the case here. We don't see US derived malware being ignored by the USG. In fact, almost all high profile hacker arrests stem from US investigations. US researchers are the ones who take out Russian and Chinese botnet C&C servers. We see almost no action on the nation states that profit from malware, namely Russia and China. On a cyber weapons level, who knows, but citing things like TTP which releases to FOSS or Israel's defense industry as a sign of corruption is asinine and not remotely comparable to what is the status quo in Russia. Cyber weapons will always be here and, when used correctly, can't be detected by signature based AV because they have no idea what to look for and the exploits they use are typically zero days. Stuxnet used, I believe, 3 or 4 different zero day attacks. Nor did you bother to read the Kaspersky articles where the proof is laid out in a pretty obvious way. I think its foolish to knee-jerk to "Oh Russia does this, so must everyone else." Certainly there are degrees of corruption, and Russia is on the extreme end of this scale. Brian Krebs and Tavis Ormandy aren't on some NSA payroll to make Russia look bad. Russians do that for free. Lets stop playing the "every government is the same" card. Its been historically untrue. >Every security vendor is aligned with it's "host" nation Also, I really doubt the guys writing rules for Snort, ClamAV, or mod_security or OSSEC are aligned with anyone. Your view is incredibly cynical and very much an example of the disingenious tactic of "whataboutism" Russians use to defend their wrongdoings. Those rules are public, pray tell, which ones are NSA backdoors? I suggest you come up with some proof if you're making such accusations. The articles I linked to about Kasperky are significant and well-researched. edit: I cant reply below so I'll type it here. Clinton-era crypto limitations are a non-issue. Clinton lost the crypto wars after the Clipper chip was never passed or funded and after Phil Zimmerman wrote PGP and helped end crypto restrictions. I'm talking about things happening right now. 20+ years ago whining is not helping nor relevant. Use whatever crypto you like.
DinkyG 11y ago
Sounds pretty circumstantial. Adobe for example has had many security vulnerabilities in flash over the years. I doubt that they were intentional back doors.
- bediger4000 11y ago
  I agree with you on the Adobe software issues, particularly PDF reader. But you raise a question: how can we tell if a security vulnerability is an intentional back door or a goof? It's pretty easy to say "intentional" in some cases, and "goof" in others, but what about the vast majority that will inevitably lie between the easy-to-tell ends of the spectrum? As an example, there's still room for argument about the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm, and RSA making that the default PRNG for some or all of their products. RSA denies taking money for it. Nobody can make an airtight case for the NSA deliberately weakening it. Yet we still all kind of view Dual_EC_DRBG with suspicion.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    The RSA deal was 10M, this was after its acquisition by EMC so 10M out of 25 billion in revenue makes it a bit an odd sum to introduce a backdoor. Not that RSA hasn't done so in the past, but it was public when encryption software could not be exported RSA cam to an agreement with the US government to export it's 64bit encryption, it would use a 40bit private key and append the message with an additional 24bits which are transmitted in clear text and complete the private key to it's 64bit size. This was a government mandated "work reducer" so the NSA if need be could decrypt the message as they had the ability to break 40bit encryption and the rest of the 24 bit of the 64bit encryption key was known for each message. This wasn't hidden, this was even released in a conference with great pride that RSA could now export it's mail encryption suit to Europe. Germany made a fuss about this 5 years after the fact, but everyone pointed and said well they announced it in a conference.
    - MichaelGG 11y ago
      People are trivially easy to bribe. The KGB bought an FBI agent for 22 years for a total of only $1.4M.[1] And an army intelligence officer for only $250K over 25 yeas.[2] It's strange to think that corporate employees would be that much harder to corrupt, especially for their own country. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Trofimoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Trofimoff
aw3c2 11y ago
And Dropbox is aligned with the US government as you surely know. Does that matter though?
- Spivak 11y ago
  Well that is a reason that people choose not to use it. Any non-US state would be silly to store their documents there.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

dubcanada 11y ago

Well obviously anti-Russia type arguments make sense, as it is a Russian product. But most of these "popular anti-virus" programs are riddled with issues. This is not just a Kaspersky thing, Norton has it's own set of issues, and so does McAFee. And I'm sure the others are not bullet proof.

eli 11y ago
Indeed, most of all software is riddled with issues
- kbenson 11y ago
  Yes, but we should hold programs purporting to increase security to a higher standard.
- jjuhl 11y ago
  Not most. All. All programs have bugs and most people can't write even a simple "hello world" program that doesn't contain bugs (in the program itself, the runtime or, underlying OS or even hardware firmware below it). Fact is: execute a program and there will be an exploitable bug somewhere. Fact of life. The system is fucked - royally!
jgalt212 11y ago
I guess it would be more correct to speak of hidden or embedded biases or conflicts of interest.

at-fates-hands 11y ago

I don't use their products and the place I used to work was a little surprised when I pointed out his multiple connections to the current regime. I also thought it was odd he always seemed to have no problem catching US nation state malware, but all of those Russian state cyber weapons other companies keep finding seem to allude him and his team. Coincidence?

happyscrappy 11y ago
Maybe he doesn't like polonium.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I was reading about how Estonia and Ukraine were victims to all these client side hacks from the Russian government which Kaspersky magically couldn't detect. I think its pretty obvious they're in cahoots. I imagine these governments are no longer running Kaspersky. Brian Krebs also writes about popular malware that first does a check to see if its being run on a computer in Russia. If so, it stops running. There's a lot of government sponsored malware coming from Russia. There's a public private partnership to put profitable malware on non-Russian computers and Russian officials turn a blind eye due to corruption, bribes, etc. Its all fairly ugly.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Every security vendor is aligned with it's "host" nation, that is how business works. Not to mention that it's one of the only few sources for these types of enterprises to recruit from in the first place. Most of the security software coming out of Israel like Checkpoint goes even beyond that and it's actual code that was written in the IDF and was released for commercial use. The NSA also has a technology transfer program that enables commercialization of many technologies which were invented or developed by the NSA, they also release quite a abit of their TTP software as open source.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    I think you're certainly overstating the case here. We don't see US derived malware being ignored by the USG. In fact, almost all high profile hacker arrests stem from US investigations. US researchers are the ones who take out Russian and Chinese botnet C&C servers. We see almost no action on the nation states that profit from malware, namely Russia and China. On a cyber weapons level, who knows, but citing things like TTP which releases to FOSS or Israel's defense industry as a sign of corruption is asinine and not remotely comparable to what is the status quo in Russia. Cyber weapons will always be here and, when used correctly, can't be detected by signature based AV because they have no idea what to look for and the exploits they use are typically zero days. Stuxnet used, I believe, 3 or 4 different zero day attacks. Nor did you bother to read the Kaspersky articles where the proof is laid out in a pretty obvious way. I think its foolish to knee-jerk to "Oh Russia does this, so must everyone else." Certainly there are degrees of corruption, and Russia is on the extreme end of this scale. Brian Krebs and Tavis Ormandy aren't on some NSA payroll to make Russia look bad. Russians do that for free. Lets stop playing the "every government is the same" card. Its been historically untrue. >Every security vendor is aligned with it's "host" nation Also, I really doubt the guys writing rules for Snort, ClamAV, or mod_security or OSSEC are aligned with anyone. Your view is incredibly cynical and very much an example of the disingenious tactic of "whataboutism" Russians use to defend their wrongdoings. Those rules are public, pray tell, which ones are NSA backdoors? I suggest you come up with some proof if you're making such accusations. The articles I linked to about Kasperky are significant and well-researched. edit: I cant reply below so I'll type it here. Clinton-era crypto limitations are a non-issue. Clinton lost the crypto wars after the Clipper chip was never passed or funded and after Phil Zimmerman wrote PGP and helped end crypto restrictions. I'm talking about things happening right now. 20+ years ago whining is not helping nor relevant. Use whatever crypto you like.

DinkyG 11y ago

Sounds pretty circumstantial. Adobe for example has had many security vulnerabilities in flash over the years. I doubt that they were intentional back doors.

bediger4000 11y ago
I agree with you on the Adobe software issues, particularly PDF reader. But you raise a question: how can we tell if a security vulnerability is an intentional back door or a goof? It's pretty easy to say "intentional" in some cases, and "goof" in others, but what about the vast majority that will inevitably lie between the easy-to-tell ends of the spectrum? As an example, there's still room for argument about the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm, and RSA making that the default PRNG for some or all of their products. RSA denies taking money for it. Nobody can make an airtight case for the NSA deliberately weakening it. Yet we still all kind of view Dual_EC_DRBG with suspicion.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The RSA deal was 10M, this was after its acquisition by EMC so 10M out of 25 billion in revenue makes it a bit an odd sum to introduce a backdoor. Not that RSA hasn't done so in the past, but it was public when encryption software could not be exported RSA cam to an agreement with the US government to export it's 64bit encryption, it would use a 40bit private key and append the message with an additional 24bits which are transmitted in clear text and complete the private key to it's 64bit size. This was a government mandated "work reducer" so the NSA if need be could decrypt the message as they had the ability to break 40bit encryption and the rest of the 24 bit of the 64bit encryption key was known for each message. This wasn't hidden, this was even released in a conference with great pride that RSA could now export it's mail encryption suit to Europe. Germany made a fuss about this 5 years after the fact, but everyone pointed and said well they announced it in a conference.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    People are trivially easy to bribe. The KGB bought an FBI agent for 22 years for a total of only $1.4M.[1] And an army intelligence officer for only $250K over 25 yeas.[2] It's strange to think that corporate employees would be that much harder to corrupt, especially for their own country. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Trofimoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Trofimoff

aw3c2 11y ago

And Dropbox is aligned with the US government as you surely know. Does that matter though?

Spivak 11y ago
Well that is a reason that people choose not to use it. Any non-US state would be silly to store their documents there.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]