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Dodging Russian Spies, Customers Are Ripping Out Kaspersky (thedailybeast.com)
From a report: Multiple U.S. security consultants and other industry sources tell The Daily Beast customers are dropping their use of Kaspersky software all together, particularly in the financial sector, likely concerned that Russian spies can rummage through their files. Some security companies are being told to only provide U.S. products. And former Kaspersky employees describe the firm as reeling, with department closures and anticipation that researchers will jump ship soon. "We are under great pressure to only use American products no matter the technical or performance consequences," said a source in a cybersecurity firm which uses Kaspersky's anti-virus engine in its own services. The Daily Beast granted anonymity to some of the industry sources to discuss internal deliberations, as well as the former Kaspersky employees to talk candidly about recent events.
more usa government paranoia and fud - how boring
They can't accept blame for their own problems, it's the always the russians, not them
When it turns out that US AV companies do exaaactly the same shit, because all AV vendors do it.
At least Kaspersky actually made decent detection products.
Enjoy the farce that is Norton & McAfee
You simply can not. Not Possible.
AV software needs to have full kernel level access to be able to protect you. As soon as you make a "safe space" for yourself, it's another place where malware can and will hide. Either you give full access to the hardware, not just the OS, or there is no way to actually protect the system. That's what makes things like the Intel management engine which has full control of your hardware, but no oversight by the OS or the user is so dangerous. It's why the NSA made intel to implement switches so they can disable Intel ME on NSA computers.
AV software need to phone home: to get virus definition updates and nowadays more importantly react fast to new networked threats by uploading possibly dangerous files. They have honeypots which do this all over the internet for years of course. However crowdsourcing new threats is much much more effective, since the really dangerous Malware, e.g. Stuxnet which was found by kaspersky, is targeted, not just spammed anymore.
The actually new and "best" high end products from Silicon Valley make the uploading of files from customers their main selling point: they claim only this way they can protect their enterprise clients. Kaspersky comparatively is low end consumer AV for the unwashed masses. The most expensive products like carbon black simply don't work if you're not uploading all your private files to a US company which is in deep with the US government agencies. All of the other AV companies in the US are too: google Project CAMBERDADA which shows what AV companies need to be attacked to subvert by the NSA. All the US/UK AV companies are suspiciously absent since they don't need to be reverse engineered: like any other US/UK based company they are working hand in hand with the intelligence services.
As a normal user in the West, I far more fear my own government's agencies, be it FBI, CIA, NSA, GCHQ, DGSE, BND, whatever, than a foreign agency far away: the domestic agency can actually directly harm me, fine me, incarcerate me, etc. than some agency in a country on another continent. And they have actually far more reason to do all that to me.
The end result:
AV software is a fundamentally flawed product due to all of this and simply shouldn't be used on any computer where you want to have a marginal expectation of privacy since you cannot protect yourself and use such a software.
all of a sudden. What happened to "I've got nothing to hide."?
Yes, and thankfully their FUD doesn't work anymore.
Kaspersky is popular because it wins at independent tests run by experts. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and their parrots should either hire some real security experts, people who can understand low level code, or simply keep being laughable.
If they believe that Kaspersky is trying to access sensitive information and send anything related to it through the Internet, they should prove it through its function, not because a spy told you so. Such as Kaspersky dealing with Stuxnet on a technical level instead of silly stories about espionage.
The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and their parrots should either hire some real security experts, people who can understand low level code
That would be a good idea if their agenda was to uncover the truth. Unfortunately, those organizations have made it clear that they're an unofficial branch of the Democratic party, so don't expect them to stray from the red scare narrative; they will ignore or twist facts shamelessly to serve their masters. They don't care if a good company with a good product is decimated in the process.
Nowadays, there's probably more truth and unbiased articles in the newsletter of the Flat Earth Society than in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. They have made themselves irrelevant at a time where their industry was already struggling. Bravo.
lucm, indeed.
I'd like to hear more technical information about the issue and whether there are steps that can be taken to reduce the risk of installing *any* antivirus software...
The main reason you have to run anti-software sits between the keyboard and the chair, and runs a common sense blocker plug-in.
Perhaps anti-virus wouldn't be even necessary if there were less users infected with anti-intelligence.
...I don't think anybody really believes they can trust antivirus software or any other software for that matter.
What's that? The main reason couldn't hear you, they were busy installing a Beyonce flash player. Yeah, of course it's legit...
"Dodging Russian Spies..." not only sounds like "Dodgy Russian Spies", but it also presents a reason before an actual fact on a news/article/post header. This is a perfect example of psychologically loaded news, more even so than clickbait but it actually also is clickbait as they go for the "cold-warish" juicy part of the topic first.
Now seriously, stop doing titles like this, and don't enable them by allowing such stuff verbatim on slashdot from the original biased, flawed source.
Perhaps anti-virus wouldn't be even necessary if there were less users infected with anti-intelligence.
So tired of this bullshit argument.
I've been working in infosec for 20 years.
For about half of that time, I also said that "lusers" are the main problem.
Then one day I grew up and realized that they are just being humans and that's a bullshit excuse for not doing my job properly by complaining that water is wet and gravity sucks.
Guess what? We're paid good money for solving exactly these problems. If you can't bring a rocket to the moon because of gravity, you don't belong into rocket science. If you can't build a ship that floats because water is so difficult to work with, you don't belong into shipbuilding. And if you can't deal with people being people, you don't fucking belong into information security.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
AV software is a fundamentally flawed product
Actually, it's our OS fundamentals that are flawed. In a properly designed system, the AV would not need full access to everything. Of course I'm talking 1970s "properly designed" here, not 2000s "ship half-ready to customer, then patch" philosophy. Sorry, I think they re-branded it "Agile Development".
AV is a workaround, a hack, for serious weaknesses in our fundamental systems design. That your e-mail system can access business secret documents when you open the wrong mail - that is the actual problem that needs solving. We have AV for the same reason we have condoms - there's a lot of STDs and for most of them we don't have good vaccinations.
In that sense, AV is not fundamentally flawed, because in a fundamentally non-flawed world, we wouldn't even have it. It's an at-least-this-works-most-of-the-time solution because we can't be arsed to tackle the real issues.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Antivirus software is second only to the operating system in terms of privilege and therefore makes an ideal attack vector. I bet most AV software is more than capable of maliciously stealing files, keystrokes, or planting a trojan if they were so directed.
Why is this ridiculous?!? A country believes they discovered another country's (adversarial one) spy vector. And YOU think it's perfectly sane to not say or do anything about it?
If it criticises Trump, it's fake news.
You only noticed now? It's been that way since before the election, Trump grabbed the "fake news" term and turned it into anything that disagrees with him.
No serious news source would use the term now for anything than sarcastically referring to what Trump disagrees with.
Not just govt. unfriendly opinions/activities. A lot of US intelligence agencies are private companies that also do work for the corporate sector. If you're being spied on by the NSA and/or CIA, the chances are that the same intel may be available to corporate competitors/hostile corporations. Also, a lot of active CIA employees moonlight for corporations. You're much better off with a non US affiliated software security company.
If you truly don't care about Russian aggression and think that the grass is so green over there then you would _emigrate_ to Russia. You'd discover that Russia's treatment of it's drug users, lies to it's population and use of your tax rubles are far far worse than the USAs.
But you wont do that because you prefer whining to acting on it and because deep down you know Russia is worse four it's citizens than the U.S for everyone who isn't in Putin's list of favorites.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Some security companies are being told to only provide U.S. products
Given the choice between Kaspersky and the FSB vs Symantec Endpoint Security, I'd feel better protected by Kaspersky + FSB.
True, I was really pissed when Arris and Symantec activated SEP without my permission, and wouldn't allow me access to the internet unless I clicked to allow them access to the kingdom.
Took a few phone calls to both to clear that up.
But protection isn't the issue here with Kaspersky.
So what we have is the idea that Kaspersky is great, and all of the concerns about it are lies. That Israel is lying, the USA is lying, that the owner who is/was KGB and other executives who are FSB at Kaspersky are an exception to the rule that once you are in that world, you never leave that world, and that when you give a program where you give the providers of the program the keys to the kingdom, that given the background of th eactors, that they won't exploit what you gave them permission to exploit? https://www.extremetech.com/in...
It all boils down to a matter of trust. I take it that you trust the Russians and the FSB/KGB much more than you trust anyone in the USA? I surely don't, and the concerns about Kaspersky have been around a lot longer than Hillary's emails.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
For Chriissakes the ACs are Russians
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Citation needed.
http://time.com/4783932/inside-russia-social-media-war-america/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/politics/russia-facebook-twitter-election.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war
https://www.newsmax.com/Politics/james-clapper-absolutely-russia-interfered/2017/05/30/id/793102/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448931/vladimir-putin-russian-election-interference-american-incompetence-weakness-helped-it
I'd lay off the magic mushrooms.
Yeah, I know-- don't bother saying it: you're not going to read any of these because "that's all fake news because the mainstream media lies". Yeah. When you dismiss everything that confronts your entrenched position, yes of course you will never change your mind.
It just astonishes me how many places these Russian troll farms end up. I've been on some pretty obscure forums of late, and when the topic of Russia comes up, all of a sudden you have these streams of messages about how bad the US is, or how Russia isn't a threat to anyone. I think back over the last five or six years about all the posters I just sort of disregarded at the time as being nutty conspiracy theorists ranting on about the evils of the US government, and now I wonder if at least some portion of those posters really are just Russian trolls. They've pulled off some pretty interesting, if odd stunts, like duping Texan secessionists.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Using software from your main adversary is profoundly bad security. The same is true when Russia uses US software.
Antivirus software is second only to the operating system in terms of privilege and therefore makes an ideal attack vector. I bet most AV software is more than capable of maliciously stealing files, keystrokes, or planting a trojan if they were so directed.
I don't consider Russia an adversary;
Then you are stupid.
I don't mind people being stupid-- people are stupid sometimes; it happens. I do mind people being deliberately stupid because being stupid is the only way that they can defend their ideology.
If your idiotic ideology telling you "Washington is our enemy" and that means Russia is fine, you might consider changing your ideology to one that allows you to actually see the real world.
With due respect - it's not that "the topic of Russia comes up", it is that _you_, the trolls (backed by the mega-trolls in the form of US mainstream media) start your conspiracy theories about Russian plots. Then when people point out that, indeed as you describe, the US is much worse than Russia on many many issues, and that Russia is not a threat to the US but rather vice-versa, then that gets labeled as trolling and you decided these ACs are either Russians or that Russia(ns) put them up to it.
It's a sign of weakness for Russia. They've had to send in Russian troops pretending not to be Russian troops. The West has proxy fighters; the West arms and supports Russia's enemies and they have fought Russia to a standstill. Russia used to have proxies as well, but many of those are gone now.
Ukraine isn't the hopeless basket case Russia wanted to make it. The economy is recovering and is now free of Russian domination. Russia has ruined one if its best trade relationships.
Meanwhile Russia is in subsistence mode; while it's true Russia isn't suffering an economic collapse, it has stagnated and is not developing. Western capital has dried up and Russian manufacturers are cut off from the richest markets on Earth; as per the story we're reading today. The rest of the world is leaving Russia behind.
Putin seriously miscalculated and the Russian people, thrilled to have a hairy chested patriarch to care for them, followed him to failure.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch is an unofficial branch of the Democratic Party?
Riiiight. The drugs are good over here.