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Israeli Spies 'Watched Russian Agents Breach Kaspersky Software' (bbc.com)
Israeli spies looked on as Russian hackers breached Kaspersky cyber-security software two years ago, according to reports. From a report: The Russians were allegedly attempting to gather data on US intelligence programs, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. Israeli agents made the discovery after breaching the software themselves. Kaspersky has said it was neither involved in nor aware of the situation and denies collusion with authorities. Last month, the US government decided to stop using the Russian firm's software on its computers. The Israelis are said to have notified the US, which led to the ban on Kaspersky programs. The New York Times said that the situation had been described by "multiple people who have been briefed on the matter."
So Israel was spying on the US and saw that Russia was spying on the US.
Great. Wish they'd both die in a fire.
Part of the reason I've always felt nervous installing AV or anything else that wanted to run at or near kernel is exactly this: at least one third party is "in" my system...and if that third party goes sideways then the rest of my defenses aren't worth much. (e.g. is your IDS really going to flag a 10% traffic increase to your AV vendor from your AV software?)
Here's an old story you might find apolitically interesting. We knew way before the election that Kaspersky was KGB trained and a Putin loyalist. You can read my comment history of you're an actual skeptic rather than a Russian botnik. But I also recommend anyone who doubts Putin's viciousness to hear the story of how he murdered his way into office from this PBS Documentary.
As a sidenote, I'm a slashdot reader from more than a decade ago, and I've been really disappointed to see the amount of denialism present on this issue. I remember this as a place for pragmatic, intelligent, realistic people. And here's the reality: Putin is at war with you, he doesn't give a shit about you or your family or even his own citizens' families, and he actively hopes that you are confused about what he is doing, or denying it entirely.
Kaspersky's AV solutions scan files, and transmit data back to their servers if found to be malware. If nothing else, they can send back lists of files on machines that are scanned, etc.
The transmission is done thru TLS-encrypted channels.
The Russian Government, like most major governments, do their best to monitor all of the traffic they can. See the recent Wikileaks documents on "Peter-Service" for some details.
If the Russian gov't has obtained, one way or another, copies of Kaspersky's TLS keys, then they really don't need cooperation to see everything that's coming down the pipe. They can also probably MITM the connection and take control of the AV application, without Kaspersky's knowledge.
It is called "plausible deniability" for Kaspersky and fairly trivial in a country where the use of strong encryption requires a license from the gov't.
There are numerous current news articles about our (American) Justice Department is salivating over the possibility of that being possible in the U.S.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I trust(ed) Kaspersky more than the Senators bad-mouthing them. They look pretty bad in this light, though. Not because of collusion with the KGB but because their software can't, apparently, protect their own systems. So who can we trust, then? Symantec? McAfee? Windows Defender? Please. It looks like we either have to swallow the fact we're going to be entertaining uninvited guests or we'll have to try to live without our security blankets. It isn't so bad for /. readers but what about those friends and family who are more-and-more at risk? What a stinkhole we've made of the Internet.
No matter how you spin this there is no way for Kapersky to come out of this whole mess OK.
NPR does admit that Kapersky is an underwriter in their stories... They were also early to bring up the connection between them and the Russian government. It seems NPR is respectable enough to not let Kapersky money get in the way of good reporting.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Have gnu, will travel.
Are you seriously asking if any of the spies are not a spy?
I can't say I'm a fan of arguments using heavy-handed, over-simplified analogies, this one included. Seems more like a false equivalence.
Your timeline is wrong, and you are basically stating that the Israelis were only there to steal information from the US. Do you actually know this, or is this just pessimistic conjecture?
Even if they were only there initially to steal data (big if), we live in a world where everyone spies on everyone. It is what spy agencies do, it is their entire purpose. It makes no sense to expect not to be spied on, but it does make sense that allied agencies would inform you if non-allied agencies are successfully intruding into your systems.
I disagree.
Only Briebart and Fox is unbiased if you ask any Trump supporter. If any news outlet talks about Russia it is a lie by the libtards and part of the fake news if it doesn't agree with their ideology.
http://saveie6.com/
It's true that watching only news that conforms to your ideology makes you susceptible to being misinformed.
What is also plain as day to anyone who is not in an echo chamber is that not all news sources are equally ideological/fake.
It's not impossible for NPR to become a propaganda network in the future, and I would hope as many NPR consumers as possible would notice such a shift and repudiate it, a blind NPR consumer is probably going to be pretty well informed compared to a blind Fox News consumer at the moment.
This doesn't make the blind NPR consumer epistemologically superior to the blind Fox consumer, or any other blind consumer, but it does make them very lucky to have blindly consumed something that for the moment is good for them rather than toxic.
Fox news/Breitbart is fucking poison, and the people consuming it without knowing what it is are seriously harming themselves.
Maybe CNN / MSNBC are McDonalds, but NPR is vegetables.
A more apt analogy would be:
Hi neighbor. You should really stop using Equifax. We were able to break in easily, and noticed other people were as well. By the way, your Equifax data has (obviously) been compromised. Might want to look into that.
It's true that you should listen to multiple sources from multiple viewpoints, but you also need to keep in mind that not all subjects have a "both sides." If Media Outlet A had a report saying "Many scientific studies show evolution is real" and Media Outlet B had "Scientists Wrong; World Created 5,000 Years Ago", there wouldn't be a comparison. You couldn't simply say "well, that's a difference of opinion and both are equally valid." One has mounds of scientific evidence on their side and the other is based off of adding ages in a very old book that some claim was written by a deity.
So listen to multiple sources, but also weight the evidence on each side. And if a source constantly gives patently false information (not talking opinions you disagree with, but something provably false), cut it out and find another to read (keeping the balance as much as possible to prevent the echo chamber effect).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This issue is not immune to the scientific method. Much of the approbation for Fox, and kudos for NPR, comes from the Knowledge Networks study almost 15 years ago:
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineRepo...
It IS possible for everybody to agree on a few simple facts, no really. Then you can survey news consumers for whether they are right on those really simple facts, and find which consumers have the best score. In this 2003 poll, you actually had the amazing stat that people who watched a lot of Fox had lower scores than the Fox fans who watched a little - a lot of watching actually subtracted from your factual knowledge. And NPR listeners had the highest score.
This study should be repeated yearly, about multiple news stories, and the results should be common knowledge. News sources should be competing on whether their viewers get 80% of 90%, not whether they get 90% or 25%.
Man, if you`re a nation of 350 million people who invented the Internet and have a larger security budget than the rest of the world put together, it must totally burn you to be hacked by a half-starved, half-drunk nation of 150 million.
But not as much as being told about it by a nation of 8 million.
Guys, we don`t agree with all your foreign adventurism and neo-colonialism, but if you`re going to run around the planet just making enemies hand-over-mailed-fist, you really need to up your cybersecurity game. You have WAY too many of your human IT resources trying to figure out how to out-snapchat SnapChat.
And hire Snowden back. That guy could run a computer.
You can tell lies by telling nothing but the truth.
I don't think Fox News can... If they can, they aren't. They seem to resort to normal lying quite regularly.
NPR is only slightly better but not much. It's nauseating to listen to them. What they report on and how they report on it is very one sided. Too much emotional manipulation. Too many loaded questions. Too many attempts for "gotcha moments" instead of understanding any position. Too many one sided arguments and token opponents. Too many fallacious arguments; strawmen and appeals are the norm.
It doesn't seem like you are defending Fox, so I won't bother pointing out all the BS on their side. But I honestly don't see any of what you are talking about with NPR. Can you cite any of the stuff you are describing from NPR?
If you think they are fair and balanced then perhaps you are already in an echo chamber. When I listen to them I don't feel like I am becoming better informed but rather learning talking points from a emotionally manipulative propagandist with an agenda.
It's possible. But I think I would have to only consume NPR and sources like it to be really be in an echo chamber. And honestly I think the term "fair and balanced" is basically meaningless after Fox News claiming this as their slogan for so long. It means different things to different people. To some people, being fair and balanced means being equally critical of "both" sides of an argument regardless of merit or how many sides there even are.
What I will say about NPR is that it is not often (I can't even remember the last time) when they reported something as fact that turned out to be false. Yes, the media can be deceptive with which facts they decide to report and which to omit. But omitting facts does not prevent those facts from being reported by other media outlets. What relevant facts did NPR omit? I haven't seen any.