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Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence
- vectorEQ 9y agoif someone is suprised by this please, do yourself a favor, and become a farmer or something...
- chinathrow 9y agoBut we might still be outraged and boycott their products, all right?
- Dolores12 9y agoIsn't this exactly what CIA\NSA would want?
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoNothing is stopping you but that's like saying you want to boycott Monsanto products because of the latest misdeed to make the rounds in the news. You should have assumed Kaspersky was working with Russian intelligence before buying just like you should have assumed Monsanto was evil before buying. Kapersky is one of Russia's top cybersecurity research institutions by default because of the products they sell and the stuff they need to do to make those products. Cooperation with Russian intelligence isn't really optional for them. If they didn't want to cooperate they'd either be infiltrated making it a non-issue or they'd be "convinced". This is no different than Russia not wanting to use Win10 because they assume that the NSA put in feature requests (or created the features themselves without telling anyone at MSFT).
- chinathrow 9y ago> Cooperation with Russian intelligence isn't really optional for them. But that does in no way make it allright - from a consumer perspective. Am I missing something?
- Jonnax 9y agoSure. But at the same time it would be foolish to assume that Symantec doesn't work with the US security agencies or Sophos doesn't work with British agencies. In the worst case scenario, if the government wanted them to, they would have to hand over anything they work on to continue operating.
- PeanutCurry 9y agoThis was my takeaway. My understanding of the top comment in the chain wasn't that we shouldn't be offended. Just that we shouldn't be surprised. It would be like being surprised that Boeing takes orders from the U.S. government sometimes.
- chinathrow 9y ago> Sure. But at the same time it would be foolish to assume that Symantec doesn't work with the US security agencies or Sophos doesn't work with British agencies. But that's not what I said at all. I also condemn all of these agency ties, no matter the country affected.
- fiatpandas 9y agoI think what is confusing you is people are ignoring the point about non-technical consumers and simply using this thread as an opportunity to fluff their crypto-geopolitical feathers and look cool through the use of hyperbole and other techniques. Yes, you have a point. From a consumer's perspective, who may be using their software without realizing it is Russian or has direct ties to Russian state, there should be education and discussion of this fact. Good thing Bloomberg has a broader audience than HN.
- have_faith 9y agoWhat is obvious to us, isn't obvious to everyone else.
- thinkMOAR 9y agoI had this plan, but somebody recently ruined that by explaining the life of a farmer is also filled with software, copyrights (on software/firmwares etc), DRM etc etc Farmer life isn't very much different from a it techy in a 'technology disappointing' kind of way.
- wand3r 9y agoOh and the copywrite on seeds. Which even if the GMO "patented" Monsanto seeds blow onto your property and grow; can still cause problems for you
- atakurt 9y agoit would be fun if it has been working with cia/nsa.
- westmeal 9y agoIsn't Kaspersky a Russian name?
- konart 9y agoWell, this is a russian company founded by a russian whose name is Evgeny Kaspersky. I'd say family name origins are not russian, but I don't think you are interested in etymology or onomatology here.
- westmeal 9y agoIsn't Kaspersky a Russian name?
- wrinkl3 9y agoFor anyone who's been to their conferences/seminars, this is really easy to guess from the way their employees talk. They love to paint the GRU as a cool older brother all while dissing the CIA for carrying out endless attacks against their clients.
- jomkr 9y agoI got drunk with one of their employees at a conference in London and he started loudly singing "The Internationale". It really annoyed the yanks, I found it quite funny.
- r721 9y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743092
- joe_the_user 9y agoSo, it is American intelligence officials who are concerned about this situation? At some time in the past, the US, as a democratic society might have done something to separate offensive and defensive intelligence, used some method to give us something like an assurance that concern by American officials would mean that Kaspersky was doing something shady rather, say, that Kapersky was one tool they couldn't use to spy (not that I know anything about the situation at hand). But as it is, the US (along with all the other states, of course) produced a situation where there's no real difference between the "state actors", where basically every software product from a given nation risks being requisitioned as well be spyware for that nation. Perhaps it's just as well and anyone caring about privacy will move to all open source, defined builds and so-on. Or perhaps just buy software from the smallest, least important nation.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> there's no real difference between the "state actors" This is a classically bogus argument [1]. A foreign adversary, constitutionally unbound, is more worrisome than a domestic actor who, while having a more-legitimate threat of violence, also faces realistic odds of retribution. While throwing democracy under a bus seems to be in vogue nowadays, suggesting moral or democratic equivalence between the Russian and American states is absurd. Americans support the NSA, et cetera [2] despite lots of messaging to counter their agenda. A better argument would entail how the tech community could communicate its message to American voters. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-america...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dogma1138 9y agoGovernment agencies employ local industry resources especially in cutting edge technical fields, in other news water is wet.
- autogeek 9y agoThis is old news. I thought Bloomberg had found more evidence on this topic. Here's Kaspersky's response to Bloomberg's article :https://usa.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2017_kaspersky-lab-response-clarifying-inaccurate-statements-published-in-bloomberg-businessweek-on-july-11-2017 https://usa.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2017_kaspersk...
- campuscodi 9y agoAh, this laughable article with no actual proof... thought this died when it was debunked and ridiculed online last month. The HN frontpage is the last place where I expected to see it again.
- notfromhere 9y agoYeah, because Russian intelligence would never co-opt its economic assets for espionage.
- oelmekki 9y agoI can get why such a thing would be scary to a government. But really, there's no reason this should be about Russia. "Government runs closed source software distributed by foreign company" should sound scary whatever government it is, wherever the company is based. Governments need to be able to audit the code they run. If there is a place where the "100% libre software" ambition should rule, it's there (provided govs indeed have people who audit code, obviously).
- nthcolumn 9y agoThis article was presented before and here it is again. Some other people intent on giving Eugene a hard time recently: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-kasperskylab-analysis-idUSKBN19Z0EH http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-kasperskylab-analysis-... True, it must be hard to remain objective when this happens: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/kaspersky-labs-top-investigator-reportedly-arrested-in-treason-probe/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/kaspe... On the recent embassy ban a former CIA station chief said it will mostly affect the russian staff whom they all assumed to be spies anyway as they suspected that nobody would get a job there unless they had been vetted by GRU. May we assume they would think the same for KL employees? Maybe US intelligence is still butthurt over exposure of and then also loss of tools - Equation group et al? Can you imagine how much crapola is coming down the old shitpipe currently - hacked elections, shadowbrokers, HBO/mandiant...? The list of agenda items on the briefing meetings just gets longer and longer and the politicians just get crazier and crazier. Oh Lordy!
- technologia 9y agoNo shit.
- m88m 9y agoOh I have another clickbait. American Companies have been working with the NSA. Common knowledge folks.
- crb002 9y agoKaspersky also probably has dealings with GHCQ/NSA. If you are a top vendor then nation state actors are going to want to subcontract out non-sensitive duties.