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The problem with that viewpoint is to treat Russia as a monolithic entity. Despite military aggression and political and speech repression by the ruling junta,

The problem with that viewpoint is to treat Russia as a monolithic entity. Despite military aggression and political and speech repression by the ruling junta, there is still a vibrant and mostly functional economy. Kaspersky providing services to the FSB (which is kind of like NIST, FTC, FCC, FBI, and DHS all in one) is little different to Cisco or IBM providing consulting services for the respective U.S. agencies. Political conflict has always been this way, it's just more apparent now that trade information is widely accessible. To compare, Japanese companies traded with the U.S. up until the 1941 invasion, despite significant political conflict between the two countries over Manchuria and the colonies in Southeast Asia.

freehunter 9y ago
I don't think it's entirely unfair. We know that the Russian government sponsors cyber attacks. They're not the only ones, we know the USA and China and North Korea and Israel and probably every other country does too. It all has to be taken into account. If I buy Cisco gear, what's the likelihood that it has an NSA tap in it? [1] If I buy Check Point gear, what's the likelihood that it has a Mossad tap in it? [2] If I buy Kaspersky software, what's the likelihood that it has an FSB tap in it? Who would I rather be spied on by? Does it change the risk rating if we know we're under active attack by a particular country? As someone who works for a major tech company, I can tell you Snowden's information about the NSA cut deeply into the trust we had built up with our foreign customers. It is entirely fair to judge a Russian security company based on the actions of their government related to cyber attacks. Especially considering the not-entirely-democratic government of Russia does not allow private sector companies to be entirely private sector. [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/21/nsa-technique-for-cisco-spying/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/21/nsa-technique-for-cisco-... [2] http://greatcircle.com/firewalls/mhonarc/firewalls.199707/msg00223.html http://greatcircle.com/firewalls/mhonarc/firewalls.199707/ms...
- linkregister 9y ago
  Your point is undermined by your links. The first describes a remote network exploit, which is not developed by coöperation or coercion. Exploits take advantage of a software vulnerability to insert additional capabilities (espionage). I think you wanted to find a link describing the process of interdiction, which was implied to exist in the Snowden documents. The second link is just a public denial by Check Point. I'm not sure why you're implying these companies coöperate with their governments. A discovered back door would destroy Kaspersky, Huawei, Cisco, Check Point, etc.; nobody would renew their contracts with that massive loss of trust. I do think you raise an excellent point. The actual reality that these companies aren't providing back doors is not relevant when the perception is that they are. The greatest risk is not coöperation, but of remote exploitation of the software. It turns out that there are a few major countries known for conducting network exploitation campaigns, unrelated to the country of origin of the target software. Just as the Stuxnet guys were almost certainly not German, yet they had a vulnerability in Siemens software, and the NotPetya authors didn't exert physical influence over ME.Doc in Ukraine, attackers have little to do with where the software was built. As long as a government acts "scary", however, it makes companies feel less secure in the software, which affects sales. I'm not singling out software and hardware procurement officers; the "feels = reals" phenomenon is a human condition.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    The links aren't meant to prove there is some kind of government-planted backdoor, but rather to show the same kind of evidence Kaspersky is being charged with: rumors and whispers. And it's completely fair to judge based on that because every company is judged based on that.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      The link talking about a remote exploit has nothing to do with back doors. Claiming it does belies a lack of expertise (which is fine) or an intent to deceive.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > A discovered back door would destroy Kaspersky, Huawei, Cisco, Check Point, etc.; nobody would renew their contracts with that massive loss of trust. Given that a backdoor could look like an undiscovered exploit I fail to see how the one would result in the other, besides that where will you turn? To one of the other parties... Consider this the present situation and almost nobody has moved away from their vendors. Except maybe Juniper (not in your list) I don't see any of these brands as damaged (yet).
    - linkregister 9y ago
      I don't think any credible vulnerability researcher would conclude any of those companies' software vulnerabilities were back doors. If you know of one, please let me know. All of these companies write software in languages that require the programmer to track memory management and bound their own copies. The probability that software written in languages like that will generate a memory corruption vulnerability is extremely high. Has Juniper actually been damaged by the backdoored source code scandal (which is the only genuinely back doored American company I can think of)? This report claims a 5% YoY net revenue increase, along with higher GAAP profit. http://investor.juniper.net/investor-relations/press-releases/press-release-details/2017/Juniper-Networks-Reports-Preliminary-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2016-Financial-Results/default.aspx http://investor.juniper.net/investor-relations/press-release...
zzzcpan 9y ago
Weaponized hacking complicates things. You don't know to which extent Kaspersky cooperates with the FSB or even whether there isn't someone from the FSB working covertly for them, implementing backdoors.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Maybe there are some Mossad agents, French Intelligence, Chinese, NSA, etc. also working for Kaspersky. It is a multinational team.

freehunter 9y ago

I don't think it's entirely unfair. We know that the Russian government sponsors cyber attacks. They're not the only ones, we know the USA and China and North Korea and Israel and probably every other country does too. It all has to be taken into account. If I buy Cisco gear, what's the likelihood that it has an NSA tap in it? [1] If I buy Check Point gear, what's the likelihood that it has a Mossad tap in it? [2] If I buy Kaspersky software, what's the likelihood that it has an FSB tap in it? Who would I rather be spied on by? Does it change the risk rating if we know we're under active attack by a particular country? As someone who works for a major tech company, I can tell you Snowden's information about the NSA cut deeply into the trust we had built up with our foreign customers. It is entirely fair to judge a Russian security company based on the actions of their government related to cyber attacks. Especially considering the not-entirely-democratic government of Russia does not allow private sector companies to be entirely private sector. [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/21/nsa-technique-for-cisco-spying/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/21/nsa-technique-for-cisco-... [2] http://greatcircle.com/firewalls/mhonarc/firewalls.199707/msg00223.html http://greatcircle.com/firewalls/mhonarc/firewalls.199707/ms...

linkregister 9y ago
Your point is undermined by your links. The first describes a remote network exploit, which is not developed by coöperation or coercion. Exploits take advantage of a software vulnerability to insert additional capabilities (espionage). I think you wanted to find a link describing the process of interdiction, which was implied to exist in the Snowden documents. The second link is just a public denial by Check Point. I'm not sure why you're implying these companies coöperate with their governments. A discovered back door would destroy Kaspersky, Huawei, Cisco, Check Point, etc.; nobody would renew their contracts with that massive loss of trust. I do think you raise an excellent point. The actual reality that these companies aren't providing back doors is not relevant when the perception is that they are. The greatest risk is not coöperation, but of remote exploitation of the software. It turns out that there are a few major countries known for conducting network exploitation campaigns, unrelated to the country of origin of the target software. Just as the Stuxnet guys were almost certainly not German, yet they had a vulnerability in Siemens software, and the NotPetya authors didn't exert physical influence over ME.Doc in Ukraine, attackers have little to do with where the software was built. As long as a government acts "scary", however, it makes companies feel less secure in the software, which affects sales. I'm not singling out software and hardware procurement officers; the "feels = reals" phenomenon is a human condition.
- freehunter 9y ago
  The links aren't meant to prove there is some kind of government-planted backdoor, but rather to show the same kind of evidence Kaspersky is being charged with: rumors and whispers. And it's completely fair to judge based on that because every company is judged based on that.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    The link talking about a remote exploit has nothing to do with back doors. Claiming it does belies a lack of expertise (which is fine) or an intent to deceive.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > A discovered back door would destroy Kaspersky, Huawei, Cisco, Check Point, etc.; nobody would renew their contracts with that massive loss of trust. Given that a backdoor could look like an undiscovered exploit I fail to see how the one would result in the other, besides that where will you turn? To one of the other parties... Consider this the present situation and almost nobody has moved away from their vendors. Except maybe Juniper (not in your list) I don't see any of these brands as damaged (yet).
  - linkregister 9y ago
    I don't think any credible vulnerability researcher would conclude any of those companies' software vulnerabilities were back doors. If you know of one, please let me know. All of these companies write software in languages that require the programmer to track memory management and bound their own copies. The probability that software written in languages like that will generate a memory corruption vulnerability is extremely high. Has Juniper actually been damaged by the backdoored source code scandal (which is the only genuinely back doored American company I can think of)? This report claims a 5% YoY net revenue increase, along with higher GAAP profit. http://investor.juniper.net/investor-relations/press-releases/press-release-details/2017/Juniper-Networks-Reports-Preliminary-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2016-Financial-Results/default.aspx http://investor.juniper.net/investor-relations/press-release...

zzzcpan 9y ago

Weaponized hacking complicates things. You don't know to which extent Kaspersky cooperates with the FSB or even whether there isn't someone from the FSB working covertly for them, implementing backdoors.

linkregister 9y ago
Maybe there are some Mossad agents, French Intelligence, Chinese, NSA, etc. also working for Kaspersky. It is a multinational team.