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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.
Of course, the US govt doesn't need to review mcafee's source code, they already know exactly what back doors they have inserted into it, just like they claim Russia has done
You mean, stop bribing Secretary of States, former presidents under the watchful eye of the Robert Mueller FBI ?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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?
In antivirus, hack Russia you!
#DeleteFacebook
https://www.clamav.net/
The fact is, researching new viruses and maintaining up-to-date signatures requires constant work, which means the need for paid employees. This is really something that should be a collaboration between all the governments of the world and provide for free, thus facilitating far greater FOSS anti-virus solutions. As it is, it's just not something that's interesting enough for anyone to want to do as a hobby. Add to that the fact that those of us running FOSS operating systems don't use anti-virus software in the first place. I think the last time I had an anti-virus application running on my own machine was in the late 90s.
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!
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?
Found Trump's cockholster
You keep telling yourself that.
The "RUSSIANS STOLE THE ELECTION!!!" narrative is blowing up in Democrat's faces.
Exclusive: In Hill interviews, top Dems denied knowledge of payments to firm behind Trump dossier
Sitting next to Podesta during the interview: his attorney Marc Elias, who worked for the law firm that hired Fusion GPS to continue research on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC, multiple sources said. Elias was only there in his capacity as Podesta's attorney and not as a witness.
On Tuesday, that law firm, Perkins Coie, wrote in a letter that it had retained Fusion GPS as part of its representation of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The disclosure of the Democratic funding source for Fusion GPS is raising new questions for the congressional Russian investigators.
Note also that Perkins Coie hiring Fusion GPS would have been required to be reported to the FEC:
Hillary Clinton's Campaign Wasn't Honest About Paying for Trump Dossier
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has been hit with a new complaint that alleges it tried to cover up the fact that it helped pay for the infamous "Trump Russia Dossier."
The Washington-based Campaign Legal Center (CLC) said in a Wednesday complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that Hillary for America and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) broke campaign finance law by trying to hide payments related to the dossier...
Note that those are CNN and Newsweek - hardly right-wing news outlets.
That's not even getting into how Robert Meuller's FBI helped hide the bribery in the Uranium One deals that netted the Clinton's $145 million dollars....
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.
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