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McAfee Says It No Longer Will Permit Government Source Code Reviews (reuters.com)
Dustin Volz, Joel Schectman, and Jack Stubbs, reporting for Reuters: U.S.-based cyber firm McAfee said it will no longer permit foreign governments to scrutinize the source code of its products, halting a practice some security experts have warned could be leveraged by nation-states to carry out cyber attacks. Reuters reported in June that McAfee was among several Western technology companies that had acceded in recent years to greater demands by Moscow for access to source code, the instructions that control basic operations of computer equipment. The reviews, conducted in secure facilities known as "clean rooms" by Russian companies with expertise in technology testing, are required by Russian defense agencies for the stated purpose of ensuring no hidden "backdoors" exist in foreign-made software. But security experts and former U.S. officials have said those inspections provide Russia with opportunities to find vulnerabilities that could be exploited in offensive cyber operations. McAfee ended the reviews earlier this year after spinning off from Intel in April as an independent company, a McAfee spokeswoman said in an email to Reuters last week.
but until then we can't give them access to our corporate secrets.
Trump is strong, honest president and is make America great again. Russia is scapegoat for noisy Democrats.
Why am I guessing not?
The headline implies that no government will be able to conduct source code reviews, but in reality this only pertains to foreign government.
What is up with these clickbait headlines?
In Russia antivirus hack you!
Given clear supieroity of FOSS software to commercial software, why is it that any serious antivirus software is always commercial closed source product? It makes me question my long held and baselesss belief that FOSS is programming manna from heaven, gods gift to the world programming.
This is interesting news, I didn't know Russia demanded this, but I guess they wised up before, well, the US.
I do love the tongue-in-cheek from McAfee: they're blatantly trying to get the Kaspersky US market with the patriotic card by exiting the Russian one, and going backwards on the exact thing Kaspersky has stated they would allow from US!
Now, in all seriousness - does McAfee really think they are gonna catch any market with this? Does anyone with a 2 digit IQ still install McAfee?
So it's OK for the US to audit Kaspersky's source code for hidden backdoors (and Kaspersky is highly regarded for offering it), but it's not OK for Russia to audit McAfee's source code for hidden backdoors.
Because Russia.
Did I get that right?
See subject: It's 1 big downside OpenSORES has - it's far easier to find bugs TO USE AGAINST YOU when you have sourcecode & it's their "lifeblood" intellectual property (or 1 of them) too - I am SURE they don't want it imitated OR neat routines stolen too.
* I won't give away source to my work for the same basic reasons (idiots here who constantly 'stalk' harass me would possibly turn it into a bogus malicious 'doppleganger' like happened to GOOGLE in Chrome EFast https://www.google.com/search?q=Chrome+EFast&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/ & I won't allow that - too bad - because I would opensource it so others could potentially/possibly IMPROVE it...)
APK
P.S.=> So, imo @ least? They're doing the right thing (by themselves)... apk
It should read: "McAfee Says It No Longer Will Permit FOREIGN Government Source Code Reviews ".
They apparently still allow domestic (U.S.) government to perform such reviews.
private se8 party And personal Frre-loving climate The point more
Symantec and McAfee are effectively withdrawing from the governmental sector of the global market. Do they really think they're going to be able to sell to countries like China, or India without allowing for code review? Their shareholders ought to sue them.
US Gov, you're not allowed to use Kaspersky? aka the better product? Pleasechooseuspleasechooseus please o please o please choose us!
McAfee Says It No Longer Will Permit Government Source code reviews
TLA government agencies from $COUNTRY will review their code anyway, whether they submit it or not.
Hilldog, is that you?
Ridiculous right, Russia could never bribe a secretary of state. But "hacking" an election is child's play.
are excluded now.. so the u.s. still has free reign. ok. didn't use mcafee shit anyway.
It makes no sense. I'd rather more countries review it, so there's more eyes on it and less likely to have something nefarious that only benefits one or some countries.
It is a two edged sword. More people look at the code, the more confidence you have that it isn't hiding anything. But then, you also have more people who understand how to write malware that either attacks the AV app, or is able to bypass it entirely. You can have it both ways of course, if you don't let select countries that have historically acted against US interest (cough cough Russia) look at the code.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Hey, that's fine. Just remember that this policy is also denying us access to our corporate secrets too.
If McAfee's software can't be audited, then if your company does anything that could be dangerous or handles data that could be sensitive, then McAfee isn't a serious option. And if you're caught using it, everyone will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your company is wilfully reckless. Should something happen, you knew it was coming and you are responsible.
Your idea might be just the sort of thing we need to get some corporate accountability. Instead of them shrugging and saying "Hey, we thought we could trust our virus scanners, because everyone's checking it," they'll be saying "yes, we knew it couldnt' be checked and we used it anyway. That last breach was our fault and we easily could have prevented it, but we decided to be fast'n'loose with your data. Sorry. We'll be liquidating all our company's assets in order to pay a portion of the damages. Any of our stockholders (*ahem* Chairman of the Board *cough*) who knew we were still running McAfee, might be able to pay more than their mere equity in our company, so feel free to pursue them."
Enterprise software is so complex that there must be thousands of source files with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. How does a code review catch anything? If a company has a backdoor, why on earth would they provide it in a source review? Just remove the backdoor, submit the files, and pass. Source review seems like a waste of time, how do they, or did they ensure the source they were reviewing is the source that's in the application? Perhaps they did the review, compiled, packaged, then copied to memory for installation?
Because it makes no sense. Avast is pretty good, but had a serious breach recently, that only leaves Kaspersky and F-Secure as the major non-American AV suites which are not required to either let NSA in, or to conveniently ingore certain malwares.
This is all bullshit. All it means is the government of the Russian Federation is not going to use McAffee products anymore, but a domestic product. Russia usually wins going that route of cutting out a foreign competitor in favor of domestic productions, much like the sanctions have strengthened the RF economy instead of weakening it.
The amount of Russian Meddling in our elections is by far, much less than the Obama Administration Meddling in Israeli elections.Perhaps the world should stop doing business with the US who meddles everywhere all the time, then whines when 100,000 facebook ad campaign is all the "proof" of meddling by Russians shows up.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I don't use an OS that needs a virus scanner, but if I did I'd just use Kaspersky. Even if the Russians put backdoors in it, I'm less worried about them showing up at my door.
love the spin. lol.
McAfee, Norton, and Kaspersky all have the same problem: they're all nonfree software. No one of them is more trustworthy than the others because none of them give users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the program at any time for any reason.
Digital Citizen
First Symantec and now McAfee. More likely explanation is NSA just added a new backdoor to these two AV software, and they don't want anyone else to find out.
Combined with the smear campaign against Kaspersky, they want to maximise the coverage of their new backdoor..
LOL, you can't decide whether to deflect with Hillary falsehoods, or Obama. What a pathetic little cocksucker you are.