7 ms·

Kaspersky is now banned for government use in multiple nations. Whilst there is some good work happening there, as above, for the most part, they should be cons

by shakna 2y ago

Kaspersky is now banned for government use in multiple nations. Whilst there is some good work happening there, as above, for the most part, they should be considered a state actor for Russia. That usually means that they're a threat, and these small good tokens are nothing more than PR efforts. You can't avoid politics, when considering this company.

Frederation 2y ago
Well said.
etc-hosts 2y ago
The US is on a path to un-ban Russian state affiliated companies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber-russia-trump-putin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber...
- rectang 2y ago
  That the Pentagon has announced it will cease defending Americans against Russian threats hardly means that Americans are not threatened.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Or it means that the original bans were primarily instituted because of myopic geopolitics and not because of any meaningful threats. In particular US ire towards Kaspersky grew rapidly after it was the only antivirus that picked up on NSA/'equation group' malware. It's similar how the US banned all cooperation with China in space [1] because of some tropes about them being unable to do anything except steal American tech. That's why, to this day, there are no Chinese on the ISS. After that law China proceeded to develop, launch, and man their own space station, put a rover on Mars, and even carry out an unprecedented sample return mission from the dark side of the Moon, and just generally run circles around the US (except perhaps SpaceX) in space. Interestingly US researchers may not be able to access those Moon samples (which China shared with scientists worldwide) due to this stupid law. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
    - leoc 2y ago
      Regardless what the original story behind the Kaspersky ban was, if you genuinely don't think that a Russian antivirus company represents a state-controlled threat to US organisations, public and private, in 2025 then I don't know what to say to you.
      - wqaatwt 2y ago
        Not if US and Russia become “allies”. Then UK/EU companies will become a bigger “threat”. It should go even further e.g. you don’t want ARM installing backdoors on their chips and giving hostile foreign organizations like the MI6 access to vital American infrastructure, intelligence data etc. do you? It might be the time to consider switching to Elbrus or at least mandating that all devices used by US government agencies have to use Intel’s chips.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
        I think the argument is that non-cooperation represents a much greater long term threat to everyone involved than cooperation, collaboration.
        rectang 2y ago
        Increased collaboration between the Russian state and the American state is bad for the ordinary citizens of both — and for freedom-loving people in Ukraine, Europe, and everywhere else.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        The US and Russia are the biggest nuclear powers in the world. Positive relations here are good for absolutely everybody. Positive relations do not mean one has to approve of the political system, ideology, or whatever else of the other side. See: Saudi Arabia which remained a key ally for many decades in spite of being wayyyyyy further off the spectrum (relative to the US) than Russia could ever be. Overtly adversarial relationships trend towards violence, sooner or later, and that's not a path we ever want to go down.
throwaway290 2y ago
Why not judge on the merit. Unlike PRC's deepseek or tiktok which were shown and admitted to collect all sorts of data and specifically influence public opinion to favor a foreign interest this is literally just information, white hat infosec research
- shakna 2y ago
  You cannot divorce the company from their other actions. They are engaged in cyber warfare with various nations. That means that all of their actions need to be weighed and judged. They put it on their website, which makes it company PR, regardless of how it might be seen. Good things have been done by terrible actors, since the dawn of time. It is not information alone.
  - 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
    careful or you would have to divorce google because of their actions but the larger question is, will you?
    - shakna 2y ago
      I don't believe Google has directly caused the leaking of classified information, or attacking vital infrastructure, as of yet. Kaspersky, yes [0]. TikTok, yes [1]. Google do, however, publish information on commercial spy networks [2]. However, it is likely that I would do so if they show themselves to be an enemy of my nation. If you've found Google attacking a government, I'm sure plenty of people would love to see the evidence. [0] https://securityaffairs.com/174586/intelligence/australia-bans-kaspersky-over-national-security-concerns.html https://securityaffairs.com/174586/intelligence/australia-ba... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/byte-dance-tik-tok-internal-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/byte-dance-tik... [2] https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/Buying_Spying_-_Insights_into_Commercial_Surveillance_Vendors_-_TAG_report.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/doc...
      - 2y ago
wongarsu 2y ago
All cyber security companies should be considered state actors. Even if they currently aren't it's too easy for a state to coopt them. If you build an antivirus software today, and tomorrow you get a secret court order to ignore certain malware for "national security" what are you going to do? What if it's a request to include a small binary payload in return for a lucrative government contract, with implied threats of what happens if you leak the request? You can decide not to do it and just shut down, but then the only ones left on the market are the ones that complied. If you do cyber security for more than just compliance, evaluating the software providers against your threat model was always an important step. Whether that means avoiding American, Chinese or Russian software. In the threat model of a Western government agency, Russian software should have have been off limits since the 50s (even if Kaspersky tries to tell you they are not Russian at all). That still doesn't mean their work is any less interesting or praiseworthy. Just like how you know NASA landed on the moon because Roscomos didn't dispute it, Kaspersky can do work and offer perspectives that might be more difficult for similarly sized western cyber security companies.
- yaomtc 2y ago
  I'd heard of gag orders, but I hadn't heard of secret court orders like that. I searched and found this: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/secret-court-opinion-reveals-mystery-tech-firm https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/secret-court-opi... Do you know of other examples?
  - flakeoil 2y ago
    Maybe don't put too much into the word "court order", but instead interpret it as an order from the government to force the company to use the tool for the governments/country's benefit. One could also assume that the owners and/or management of the company are in the same boat as the government/country so they do not mind using the tool for the country's benefit when needed.
  - shakna 2y ago
    Australia's Assistance and Access Orders (TAN, TCN, etc.) [0] basically allow the government to order mandatory backdoors into various software. They do have some oversight, but it isn't significant. They can order any employee, not just the company. The wording is also... Squirelly. You can't introduce a weakness, but the definition of weakness excludes the entire concept of backdoors. However, Technical Capability Notices can be ordered where: > reasonable, proportionate, practicable and technically feasible The employee/company can push back and argue one of those isn't met, but ultimately it is the office of the Governor General that decides. So far, it has basically only be used against journalists [1], as far as we know, which is nice and horrific. [0] https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/national-security/lawful-access-telecommunications/assistance-and-access-overview https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-federal-police-press-freedom/11309810 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-...
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Not since today- russia is no longer to be threated as hostile and all cyber attacks planned on it have to yield.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
codedokode 2y ago
It is not very fair singling out Kaspersky and assuming that other AV companies are not a threat to foreign countries. Foreign software and hardware is always a threat. And US was caught spying even on their allies.
- shakna 2y ago
  The US, while hardly benign, have not orchestrated multiples of "largest attack in history", for multiple previous years in a row. Russia and China, have. The threat scale here, is not an even playing field.
  - close04 2y ago
    > The US, while hardly benign, have not orchestrated multiples of "largest attack in history" You must be using a very personal interpretation of what "largest attack in history" is. The US is literally the owner and operator of the largest surveillance and intelligence collecting apparatus in the history of mankind. I bundle in here all kinds of legal and illegal surveillance, interceptions, hacking, etc. directly state run, or leveraging other intelligence agencies, or leveraging the largest private data collectors in the world which are mostly US companies. It was already proven by the Snowden leaks, it's absolutely reasonable to assume this apparatus only grew stronger. If that's not a never ending "largest attack" on everyone in the world I don't know what is.
  - 0x1ceb00da 2y ago
    Russia attacked ukraine but what did china do?
    - belter 2y ago
      "Chinese hack of US telecoms compromised more firms than previously known" - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/chinese-hack-us-telecoms-compromised-more-firms-than-previously-known-wsj-says-2025-01-05/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/chinese-hack-... "Chinese hackers are deep inside America’s telecoms networks" - https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/12/chinese-hackers-are-deep-inside-americas-telecoms-networks https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/12/chinese-hackers-a...
isaacremuant 2y ago
[flagged]
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  Russia is currently waging an actual war of invasian. They are constantly threatening multiple countries with invasion and nuking.
DeathArrow 2y ago
By the same logic, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft should be considered state actors.
- AceJohnny2 2y ago
  Why, yes.
- shakna 2y ago
  Please feel free to point out where the CIA successfully issued directives to those companies to target foreign nationals. Baring in mind, that Snowden's revelations did in fact cause outcry, and national responses to US companies. And helped push through various data protections in Europe, including stipulating non-sharing of data with the US.
  - ThinkBeat 2y ago
    Hmm, so what is your opinion of what the NSA is doing these days?
    - shakna 2y ago
      "Thank god for the GDPR"
torginus 2y ago
Has this been proven? Or is this another 'they are in a foreign country so they could be compelled to spy on us?' - not that I have a particular desire to defend Russia at this moment in time.
- ivanmontillam 2y ago
  This is a fair question. I also get nitpickity about it. Not because some organization or some person is Russian, then it must be under the control of Putin. Pavel Durov is Russian, and I don't have reasons to believe he syphons my data to the Kremlin (other than getting randomly detained in France).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 2y ago
Ironically, we are having similar discussions regarding US companies if the trend with the current administration is to continue. The big difference is that as of today, we are currently stuck with available alternatives, but it won't surprise me if many goverments start looking back into the computing diversity infrastructure that we had during cold war days.

by shakna 2y ago

Frederation 2y ago

Well said.

etc-hosts 2y ago

The US is on a path to un-ban Russian state affiliated companies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber-russia-trump-putin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber...

rectang 2y ago
That the Pentagon has announced it will cease defending Americans against Russian threats hardly means that Americans are not threatened.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Or it means that the original bans were primarily instituted because of myopic geopolitics and not because of any meaningful threats. In particular US ire towards Kaspersky grew rapidly after it was the only antivirus that picked up on NSA/'equation group' malware. It's similar how the US banned all cooperation with China in space [1] because of some tropes about them being unable to do anything except steal American tech. That's why, to this day, there are no Chinese on the ISS. After that law China proceeded to develop, launch, and man their own space station, put a rover on Mars, and even carry out an unprecedented sample return mission from the dark side of the Moon, and just generally run circles around the US (except perhaps SpaceX) in space. Interestingly US researchers may not be able to access those Moon samples (which China shared with scientists worldwide) due to this stupid law. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
  - leoc 2y ago
    Regardless what the original story behind the Kaspersky ban was, if you genuinely don't think that a Russian antivirus company represents a state-controlled threat to US organisations, public and private, in 2025 then I don't know what to say to you.
    - wqaatwt 2y ago
      Not if US and Russia become “allies”. Then UK/EU companies will become a bigger “threat”. It should go even further e.g. you don’t want ARM installing backdoors on their chips and giving hostile foreign organizations like the MI6 access to vital American infrastructure, intelligence data etc. do you? It might be the time to consider switching to Elbrus or at least mandating that all devices used by US government agencies have to use Intel’s chips.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
      I think the argument is that non-cooperation represents a much greater long term threat to everyone involved than cooperation, collaboration.
      - rectang 2y ago
        Increased collaboration between the Russian state and the American state is bad for the ordinary citizens of both — and for freedom-loving people in Ukraine, Europe, and everywhere else.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        The US and Russia are the biggest nuclear powers in the world. Positive relations here are good for absolutely everybody. Positive relations do not mean one has to approve of the political system, ideology, or whatever else of the other side. See: Saudi Arabia which remained a key ally for many decades in spite of being wayyyyyy further off the spectrum (relative to the US) than Russia could ever be. Overtly adversarial relationships trend towards violence, sooner or later, and that's not a path we ever want to go down.

throwaway290 2y ago

Why not judge on the merit. Unlike PRC's deepseek or tiktok which were shown and admitted to collect all sorts of data and specifically influence public opinion to favor a foreign interest this is literally just information, white hat infosec research

shakna 2y ago
You cannot divorce the company from their other actions. They are engaged in cyber warfare with various nations. That means that all of their actions need to be weighed and judged. They put it on their website, which makes it company PR, regardless of how it might be seen. Good things have been done by terrible actors, since the dawn of time. It is not information alone.
- 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
  careful or you would have to divorce google because of their actions but the larger question is, will you?
  - shakna 2y ago
    I don't believe Google has directly caused the leaking of classified information, or attacking vital infrastructure, as of yet. Kaspersky, yes [0]. TikTok, yes [1]. Google do, however, publish information on commercial spy networks [2]. However, it is likely that I would do so if they show themselves to be an enemy of my nation. If you've found Google attacking a government, I'm sure plenty of people would love to see the evidence. [0] https://securityaffairs.com/174586/intelligence/australia-bans-kaspersky-over-national-security-concerns.html https://securityaffairs.com/174586/intelligence/australia-ba... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/byte-dance-tik-tok-internal-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/byte-dance-tik... [2] https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/Buying_Spying_-_Insights_into_Commercial_Surveillance_Vendors_-_TAG_report.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/doc...
    - 2y ago

wongarsu 2y ago

All cyber security companies should be considered state actors. Even if they currently aren't it's too easy for a state to coopt them. If you build an antivirus software today, and tomorrow you get a secret court order to ignore certain malware for "national security" what are you going to do? What if it's a request to include a small binary payload in return for a lucrative government contract, with implied threats of what happens if you leak the request? You can decide not to do it and just shut down, but then the only ones left on the market are the ones that complied. If you do cyber security for more than just compliance, evaluating the software providers against your threat model was always an important step. Whether that means avoiding American, Chinese or Russian software. In the threat model of a Western government agency, Russian software should have have been off limits since the 50s (even if Kaspersky tries to tell you they are not Russian at all). That still doesn't mean their work is any less interesting or praiseworthy. Just like how you know NASA landed on the moon because Roscomos didn't dispute it, Kaspersky can do work and offer perspectives that might be more difficult for similarly sized western cyber security companies.

yaomtc 2y ago
I'd heard of gag orders, but I hadn't heard of secret court orders like that. I searched and found this: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/secret-court-opinion-reveals-mystery-tech-firm https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/secret-court-opi... Do you know of other examples?
- flakeoil 2y ago
  Maybe don't put too much into the word "court order", but instead interpret it as an order from the government to force the company to use the tool for the governments/country's benefit. One could also assume that the owners and/or management of the company are in the same boat as the government/country so they do not mind using the tool for the country's benefit when needed.
- shakna 2y ago
  Australia's Assistance and Access Orders (TAN, TCN, etc.) [0] basically allow the government to order mandatory backdoors into various software. They do have some oversight, but it isn't significant. They can order any employee, not just the company. The wording is also... Squirelly. You can't introduce a weakness, but the definition of weakness excludes the entire concept of backdoors. However, Technical Capability Notices can be ordered where: > reasonable, proportionate, practicable and technically feasible The employee/company can push back and argue one of those isn't met, but ultimately it is the office of the Governor General that decides. So far, it has basically only be used against journalists [1], as far as we know, which is nice and horrific. [0] https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/national-security/lawful-access-telecommunications/assistance-and-access-overview https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-federal-police-press-freedom/11309810 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-...

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

Not since today- russia is no longer to be threated as hostile and all cyber attacks planned on it have to yield.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

codedokode 2y ago

It is not very fair singling out Kaspersky and assuming that other AV companies are not a threat to foreign countries. Foreign software and hardware is always a threat. And US was caught spying even on their allies.

shakna 2y ago
The US, while hardly benign, have not orchestrated multiples of "largest attack in history", for multiple previous years in a row. Russia and China, have. The threat scale here, is not an even playing field.
- close04 2y ago
  > The US, while hardly benign, have not orchestrated multiples of "largest attack in history" You must be using a very personal interpretation of what "largest attack in history" is. The US is literally the owner and operator of the largest surveillance and intelligence collecting apparatus in the history of mankind. I bundle in here all kinds of legal and illegal surveillance, interceptions, hacking, etc. directly state run, or leveraging other intelligence agencies, or leveraging the largest private data collectors in the world which are mostly US companies. It was already proven by the Snowden leaks, it's absolutely reasonable to assume this apparatus only grew stronger. If that's not a never ending "largest attack" on everyone in the world I don't know what is.
- 0x1ceb00da 2y ago
  Russia attacked ukraine but what did china do?
  - belter 2y ago
    "Chinese hack of US telecoms compromised more firms than previously known" - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/chinese-hack-us-telecoms-compromised-more-firms-than-previously-known-wsj-says-2025-01-05/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/chinese-hack-... "Chinese hackers are deep inside America’s telecoms networks" - https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/12/chinese-hackers-are-deep-inside-americas-telecoms-networks https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/12/chinese-hackers-a...

isaacremuant 2y ago

[flagged]

TiredOfLife 2y ago
Russia is currently waging an actual war of invasian. They are constantly threatening multiple countries with invasion and nuking.

DeathArrow 2y ago

By the same logic, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft should be considered state actors.

AceJohnny2 2y ago
Why, yes.
shakna 2y ago
Please feel free to point out where the CIA successfully issued directives to those companies to target foreign nationals. Baring in mind, that Snowden's revelations did in fact cause outcry, and national responses to US companies. And helped push through various data protections in Europe, including stipulating non-sharing of data with the US.
- ThinkBeat 2y ago
  Hmm, so what is your opinion of what the NSA is doing these days?
  - shakna 2y ago
    "Thank god for the GDPR"

torginus 2y ago

Has this been proven? Or is this another 'they are in a foreign country so they could be compelled to spy on us?' - not that I have a particular desire to defend Russia at this moment in time.

ivanmontillam 2y ago
This is a fair question. I also get nitpickity about it. Not because some organization or some person is Russian, then it must be under the control of Putin. Pavel Durov is Russian, and I don't have reasons to believe he syphons my data to the Kremlin (other than getting randomly detained in France).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 2y ago

Ironically, we are having similar discussions regarding US companies if the trend with the current administration is to continue. The big difference is that as of today, we are currently stuck with available alternatives, but it won't surprise me if many goverments start looking back into the computing diversity infrastructure that we had during cold war days.