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Tech Firms Let Russia Probe Software Widely Used by US Government (reuters.com)
Major global technology providers SAP, Symantec, and McAfee have allowed Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software deeply embedded across the U.S. government, Reuters reported on Thursday. From the report: The practice potentially jeopardizes the security of computer networks in at least a dozen federal agencies, U.S. lawmakers and security experts said. It involves more companies and a broader swath of the government than previously reported. In order to sell in the Russian market, the tech companies let a Russian defense agency scour the inner workings, or source code, of some of their products. Russian authorities say the reviews are necessary to detect flaws that could be exploited by hackers. But those same products protect some of the most sensitive areas of the U.S government, including the Pentagon, NASA, the State Department, the FBI and the intelligence community, against hacking by sophisticated cyber adversaries like Russia.
Miss Mash, WHY. Please, WHY. Explain what is going on.
Is it the ergot fungus in the bread?
I'm sure Germany conducts similar code reviews. The original NAZIS!!!!! The 1950's called, they want their Red Scare back.
Seriously, Hillary Clinton lost. Get over it already.
... that I could be confident our elected officials were at least smart enough not to believe Russian officials also needed root access to all the production machines in order to complete a source code audit.
just wow
China demanded the source code for Microsoft stuff, in order to allow them to do business in the country. This isn't anything new. What needs done is the US to go to F/OSS, where everyone scrutinizes bugs, not the hallowed few who have source code access.
So if it's wrong/bad for foreign entities to view the source code of software used by the US government, does that mean that the US government should avoid any and all open source software because foreign entities can easily view its source code?
Tech firms let Russia probe software widely used by US government, following same processes US government, and all other governments, use.
This is a non-story. They try to make it sound like this is some nefarious method to undermine the US government, when the reality is that they're checking to make sure there aren't NSA backdoors.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Stupidity is absolutely everywhere. Yes, let's just give away the keys to the castle. Maybe the US Government will start building its own systems instead of relying on shitty vendors like Oracle or SAP. Systems that have great need for secrecy should be custom developed in house.
Of course a defense department looking to use a piece of software is going to inspect it for security. Frankly it's more a sign of Russia's lack of security that they would use US software on their systems than anything else. Security through obscurity isn't security so opening the source is irrelevant to anything from a security perspective.
That's nothing, Linus Torvalds regularly publishes code that EVERY SINGLE RUSSIAN can access. It's TREASON!
The problem isn't with the code being available to Russia. The problem is a lack of secure development practices and code review. Minimizing bloat and focusing on doing shit well rather than adding needless functionality or new user interfaces.
I would love the world to take security seriously. We wouldn't have near the bloat and everything would fit on a floppy disk. We'd still be using chipsets from 1994, but improved for security.
The terminal would be standard operating procedure and taught in every school. Coding would be taught in every school. Only the elite would ever find a patch accepted however.
What a naive little utopia you've imagine. Quaint.
> So if it's wrong/bad for foreign entities to view the source code of software used by the US government, does that mean that the US government should avoid any and all open source software because foreign entities can easily view its source code?
Quite the opposite.
It's a given that other governments -- especially the powerful ones -- will get to view (and review) the source of _closed_ products as a pre-requisite condition to prevent a software product from having its sales vetoed.
That way, even if you as a common customer cannot see the code, for such governments effectively all code is open source (Windows, iOS, Photoshop, you name it). It's thus foolish to seek security by obscurity. Hence, why not use open source & Free software and leverage the contributions of developers all over the world?
It's probably also safer.
Every large-enough customer can get access to source-code of closed software. This is completely standard and there is nothing nefarious going on here. This only endangers anything US if the US messed up their own review.
Who writes these demented articles?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've seen too many movies with this same story line not to take note. The one thing in my favor at this point is my advanced age. I don't want to have to see the end result. You are bringing about a true devolution of human society. Shame on all of you!
Well, no wonder. From 3 years ago:
Russian researchers expose breakthrough in U.S. spying program
The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.
That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.
Stuxnet, the hard drive firmware exploits, last year the upload of malware from a NSA developer, and others discoveries of state developed spyware have definitely made KL and other Russian based software companies targets to be hurt economically.
Make all security software open source, so everyone can look at it, and the many eyeballs cause problems to be fixed quicker.
You're right, we clearly shouldn't care when our diplomats are callously left to die for no reason. What sort of person would ever care about that?
All you have to do is release a few papers saying the "report is finished" ... never mind they didn't actually look at anything and you can find docs on the FBI Vault showing the specific classified items that were handled improperly. But no reasonable person would decide there was intent of any sort, never mind an email, also found in the FBI Vault (so no, you can't blame Wikileaks), between Hillary and Colin Powell discussing exactly how to evade the Presidential Records Act, in which Colin Powell also reveals deep ignorance of how a cell phone could lead to security breach, even after being instructed by the NSA.
And now you know that the establishment are the same party behind the scenes as well as why Hillary flipped some of her electors over to him in the hopes of using some little-known provisions to get Congress to elect him instead of Trump.
How do you like the global economy now?
You sound Ameridumb. Tell us about your Texas schoolbooks.
and all pregnancies that test false for autism will be terminated?
Reading this, I was struck by something.
Why does this story sound alarming? Maybe because the Russians could plant vulnerabilities in the code? Maybe because they could find vulnerabilities and exploit them against us?
What hit me is that every government has a good reason, an honest and honorable reason to inspect the code of systems it uses. They want it to be safe and reliable. However that also extends temptation to those governments, either to plant vulnerabilities or to discover and not report those vulns. Those are bad reasons, corrupt reasons.
The next thing that occurred to me is that all these governments are at least suspected of doing the bad things. The Russians, the Americans, the Chinese, ... maybe the Indians...
And no, I don't think that FOSS is the answer to this. FOSS is a weak response. Our governments are deeply flawed and seem to be, at best neglectful of the best interests of their citizens. At worst they are predatory.
You could say this has always been true, and that certainly was true of the worst governments. What is appalling is that even the best governments now have this stain on their hands.
Or is it more true that only America has fallen in this fashion?
Ah yes, #HillaryForPrison Hillary "Rotteneggs" Clitton traitor Hillary Clinton wants for all of us to surrender to the Clinton Crime Syndicate and perish.
Those naughty Russians always up to no good, now they want to know if there are exploits in software which they propose to deploy into their Government agencies, this is really bad its just made the NSA's job a lot harder, well it would be harder if they were out ward facing and not inward facing.
The problem isn't that foreign entities can review the source code. The problem is that nobody else gets to, so the foreign entities have the capacity to find bugs and simply not report them. You know, the kind of thing the NSA absolutely never ever would do because the US is so much better than anyone else..
Unlikely != Impossible .
The highly rated commenters all think it's impossible that this access benefits the Russians in nefarious ways. It's not impossible. Basically the point of the article is that greedy companies let Mother Russia send her experts in to examine the code of various programs that the US government also uses so they could get sales in Russia. There are lots of smart Russians. I wouldn't say there is no chance that the Russians could find an exploit in such a code review and just carry it back in their memories and at home hammer on the program until they get it working. Of course the US government could be doing the same thing as a result of their own code review.
I think not. Am I comfortable about, I think not.
Since when have Russian elections been elections? Putin arrests opponents, bans them, substitutes fake proxy opponents, and even then the votes taleys are fake as fuck. The last real vote they had resulted in Putin losing in the evening, a shutdown on the count due to 'technical difficulties' then when the vote came back, Putin wins..... after that the skew factor is very much larger to ensure there is no repeat.
WHY SHOULD WE SIT BACK AND DO NOTHING?? Putin is actively attacking our elections, so why should we roll over and take it? Regime change is needed in Russia. Putin has to go, he's the reason Russia is poor, and isolated, he's the threat to the west. Him.
Partisan people like you always trying to defend Russian attacks mixed with Russian trolls from the troll farm, and you cannot tell which of you is a partisan and which is a troll because you're the same. You look at Fox News, they blow smoke cover for Russian attacks on elections, and then Hannity does a piece with Coulter on why American women shouldn't be allowed to vote... f*king traitors. Wrap themselves in the stars and stripes and then put party over country. Russia can vote in US elections, but American women can't.
Not sure we want to see all this crappy source code.
Many eyeballs would bleed.
aaaaaaa
Reuters is a British corportation and its US branch exists and operates only as a subsidiary. Its stock trades in the US as a depository share (similar to Alibaba -- a Chinese company). Despite a common language, Britain is NOT part of the US. It has, at times, priorities which are opposed to those of the US (as was clearly evidenced by Britain's Jerusalem embaassy vote in the UN).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.