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Eugene Kaspersky: What Wired Is Not Telling You
- zht 14y agorebuttal to Eugene's rebuttal: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/kaspersky-indy/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/kaspersky-indy/
- andrewfelix 14y agoThat was a quick rebuttal. It was also awful. The author fails to counter point by point Kapersky's detailed response. Shachtman comes off as arrogant and defensive.
- modfodder 14y agoIt wasn't any worse than Kapersky's rebuttal, which also didn't counter point by point the article other than generalized statements, i.e. "registered in Great Britain" so obviously we are on the up and up, "I really like Facebook", etc. Just he said, he said until one of the parties actually releases documentation (Wired can release emails showing Kapersky's co. cooperated closely with the fact checking, Kapersky can release docs to show the opposite, etc.) As someone who is a casual reader of Wired and knows little about Kapersky, I don't know who to believe. Russian stereotypes and the current actions of Putin's government would push me towards believing the Wired article but that doesn't make me comfortable enough to say anything with confidence.
- andrewfelix 14y ago"registered in Great Britain" isn't a generalized statement, it's a fact. Shachtman paints a picture of Kapersky being in bed with the Russian government around innocuous anecdotes such as a government contract and a Christmas card. The onus is on Shachtman to provide compelling evidence for his assertions. In my opinion he has failed to do that.
- modfodder 14y agoThe generalized statement is Kapersky's assertion that being Registered in Great Britain means they aren't doing anything nefarious or unethical. Just because they are registered in the U.K. doesn't mean they are clean, I'm sure there are plenty of companies registered in the U.K. that are up to no good. Shachtman may have failed to provide compelling evidence for his assertions, but in my opinion, Kapersky's rebuttal was very weak and did very little to prove his case. Frankly, both rebuttals were weak and probably written in haste without examining how they would come across to an impartial third party.
- supercanuck 14y agoI didn't get the same generalised impression. His point was his company is governed by the laws of Great Britain not Russia. So if some sort of law was broken, he could be held accountable in Great Britain. The article implies his company can run amok under the guise of a russian corporation and be protected by the Kremlin. His rebuttal asserts this not to be true rather directly.
- modfodder 14y agoExcept that we've seen Western companies act with nearly complete impunity in highly regulated industries (most recent and notably in the banking industry in both the U.S. and the U.K. as well as companies with close gov. ties like Blackwater). And although it's registered out of the U.K., it's operating mostly in Russia. It could run amok and the U.K. courts would have a difficult time even investigating any possible transgressions, especially if the company is as close to the Kremlin as the article implies. Instinctually I trust a company run by a former Soviet intelligence officer just as much as I trust a company run by a former CIA or MI-6 officer, which is to say very little and I would assume said companies would cooperate fully with most government requests or initiatives with little resistance. That's not to say the Wired article isn't bunk, it may very well be nationalist fud.
- jonhendry 14y ago" Just because they are registered in the U.K. doesn't mean they are clean, I'm sure there are plenty of companies registered in the U.K. that are up to no good." Definitely. There are UK-registered companies that are little more than shells, but are connected to arms dealing organizations and similar.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mcantelon 14y ago>And Kaspersky agreed to appear in a documentary that used his son’s abduction as a prime example of why social networks are dangerous. Those are facts that neither he nor I can avoid. It's sinister that Kaspersky appears in a documentary talking about privacy concerns? Shachtman's really grasping at straws.
- makomk 14y agoIt's sinister that he's using it to argue that access to the Internet needs to be tightly monitored and controlled, especially as we're talking about Russia where (for instance) if people couldn't use the Internet to broadcast messages that were hard to trace we wouldn't have all gthe photographic evidence proving massive ballot-box stuffing and electoral fraud in the last election that we do have.
- smsm42 14y agoSchachman alleges that Medvedev's visit to Kaspesky Lab and work for Russia's major government bank somehow means that Kaspersky has nefarious links to the government. This is baloney. It's like saying if Obama visits Facebook or Google headquarters these companies now are CIA outlets, or saying if the Fed hires Symantec to secure their networks Symantec is now linked to US government. Of course Central bank of Russia would hire leading Russian security company to secure their network, who else they would hire? What's surprising in that? Of course leading politician may visit a company that is internationally known for its success, especially Medvedev who insisted on emphasizing the "modern hi-tech president" image. Cooperation between security researchers and cybercrime divisions of security services is also nothing new - what else security researchers would do with their findings? They can't prosecute computer criminals themselves... And of course they would get licensed by Russian security services - how else one could get government contracts, which in every country are not negligible source of income for many companies? Making it sound as if pretty standard business practices and realities - which apply both to such undeniably corrupt country as Russia and to the US and to many other developed countries - as a sign of some ominous secrets is a journalistic malpractice. It may sound to somebody uninformed as there's something shady there - but in fact there's nothing in all that stuff. There might be secrets hidden somewhere - but Schachman findings are extremely weak in that regard.
- nice1 14y agoThere is a huge difference between the way the US works (with all its flaws) and the way a dictatorship works. The Soviet Union/Russia is more like a mafia organization than a state in the usual sense. If anyone here wishes to raise their awareness of this it is rather easy (google for Litvinenko, Magnitsky, Politkovskaya). This is why the WIRED article was truthful.
- knewter 14y ago> It's like saying if Obama visits Facebook or Google headquarters these companies now are CIA outlets I feel like you should have used a better analogy, since Facebook is effectively a CIA outlet. They received funding from them.
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- dgudkov 14y agoDid you notice tag "Crazy Ivans" below the article? That's pretty offensive...
- smsm42 14y agoLooks like it's a recurring tag for Wired: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/crazy-ivans/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/crazy-ivans/ I guess somebody at Wired thinks they're being funny. IMO they're being stupid.
- notatoad 14y agoFor anybody else who missed the original article, this seems to be it: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/
- duaneb 14y agoKaspersky was definitely not the first to document Flame[r]: http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoThey may simply have been unaware of other documentation on it. Or too proud, of course.
- lbcadden3 14y agoBoth sides are weak. Sounds like a personal thing frankly.
- 1gor 14y agoOriginal WIRED article looks like argumentum ad hominem attack on a technology company for its alleged links to Russian government. It is sad that propaganda war between the US and Russia is spreading to 'technology' news media. We are better off discussing technology, not politics.
- aidenn0 14y agoI had a print subscription to Wired the first year it came out. IIRC it was fairly political even back then.
- rickmb 14y agoDiscussing technology without politics is sticking your head in the sand. Technology has a political impact, and technological choices are politically influenced. Half the topics on HN would be very different if you took away the political context. Unless you only want to discuss programming languages at an academic level, it's almost impossible to ignore the politics.
- SeanDav 14y agoAcademic politics are just as ferocious as country politics and in many cases (e.g. global warming) almost inseparable.
- photon137 14y ago"...and technological choices are politically influenced" Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying to solve. The course of war, peace and espionage may be determined by politics but the choice of technology is totally influenced by the problems war and espionage may present that technology needs to be able to solve. You can't build a "liberal" radar or a "conservative" radar or a downright "communist" radar. You can just build a radar to detect aircraft.
- danso 14y ago> Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying to solve. Let me guess: you've never worked in government contracting before?
- tomasienrbc 14y agoThe first article was detailed and pretty interesting. The rebuttals were both weak and just CRAZY uninformative. Left with no other option, for now I'm choosing to not care.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoC'mon people. How many "former" KGB agents do you know go completely legit and not have some ties to the Kremlin? Unfortunately, their track record with former spies is pretty well documented. Once an agent, always an agent.
- jaylevitt 14y agoWhat? How many former KGB agents do you know, period?
- mlvljr 14y agoThey are all evil, yeah. But their girlfriends are always pretty (just watch the Bond movies)! ...
- huhtenberg 14y agoC'mon, you surely must know that the KGB outlet he graduated from was a math school on steroids, not the 007 training facility. The chances of him still being an agent because of that are well comparable to being simply hard-pressed into cooperation after his company acquired a momentum.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoMost of the famous "Cambridge Five" studied languages and history and were some of the most successful Russian spies of the 1950's. Just because he studied math does not excuse him from his association with the KGB. I'm not saying he's still active, but those relationships are for life, and you don't just walk away from the KGB/FSB unscathed. Just ask Alexander Litvinenko.
- huhtenberg 14y agoYou are refuting a point that I didn't make.
- nsns 14y agoDid he just use Indiana Jones (a fictional character) as a precedent for himself?
- jcitme 14y agoI don't find it unusual. He's building rapport with a reader base by referencing american pop culture, and possibly knowing that many linkbait-y blogs will jump on this as a hook. Nothing too weird, but imo more of a way to bring publicity to his rebuttal than an actual argument point.
- nsns 14y agoTo me, it seemed rhetorically counter-productive, but its a minor point really.
- mischov 14y agoI don't see why using a fictional character to make this point is harmful. A much wider range of people know who Indiana Jones is than who (take your pick of experts consulted with by a government) is. Because he chose a more widely known (albeit fictional) example, more people are able to better grasp the idea he is presenting. It's just good communication.
- billswift 14y agoAnother good reason for using fictional examples when it fits your argument is that their contexts are more limited and less likely to trip context-driven ideological or emotional biases.
- kalleboo 14y agoI have no doubt that Kaspersky has close ties to the FSB and Kremlin. Just as I have no doubt that U.S. security companies have close ties to the CIA/FBI. Pick your poison.
- Tloewald 14y agoI hate to break it to him, but Indiana Jones is a fictional character and, were he a real person, would have been considered a terrible, terrible archeologist -- on par with 19th century "archeologists" who dynamited ruins and chiseled choice bits off monuments.
- huhtenberg 14y agoSo, basically, you are saying that Kaspersky thinks that Indiana Jones was real. What a thoughtful nitpick.
- Tloewald 14y agoNo, that Kaspersky used a bizarre example to illustrate a dubious point.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ucee054 14y agoFor the same reasons that I expect Kaspersky corp to be attached at the hip to the FSB, I expect Oracle and Facebook to be attached at the hip to the CIA.
- gori 14y agoThe tag on the Wired rebuttal to the rebuttal: Crazy Ivans. That's just bad. I really thought Wired were above that. I guess I was wrong.
- 1337biz 14y agoA while ago I thought about what a perfect gateway Antivirus software would make to gain access to millions of machines. In order to stay up to date they are allowed to make regular calls home, are proprietary, and most often for end users even given away for free. Motivated by this post I just went through a list of the Worldwide Antivirus Vendor Market Share[1], looked up their country of origin, and I have to admit that I find the fragmentation of the industry and the internationalization quite remarkable. Of cause I have no datapoints for comparison, but I still find it interesting that so many nations are home to their very own Antivirus software provider. Company Marketshare CountryOfOrigin AVAST SOFTWARE 12.37% Czech Republic AVG TECHNOLOGIES 12.37% Czech Republic AVIRA GMBH 12.29% Germany MICROSOFT CORP. 11.24% United States ESET SOFTWARE 9.98% Slovakia SYMANTEC CORP. 8.77% United States KASPERSKY LABS 7.98% Russia MCAFEE, INC. 4.50% United States PANDA SECURITY 4.18% Spain COMODO GROUP 2.79% United States TREND MICRO, INC. 2.15% Japan PC TOOLS SOFTWARE 2.00% Australia EMSI SOFTWARE GMBH 1.16% Germany SOFTWIN 1.11% Romania F-SECURE CORP. 0.95% Finland OTHERS 6.16% [1] http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/OPSWAT-Market-Share-Report-June-2011.pdf http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/OPSWAT-Market-Shar...
- SoapSeller 14y agoMicrosoft Security Essentials was(and I believe still) developed in Israel.