Slashdot Mirror
US Government Can't Get Controversial Kaspersky Lab Software Off Its Networks (thedailybeast.com)
The law says American agencies must eliminate the use of Kaspersky Lab software by October. But U.S. officials say that's impossible as the security suite is embedded too deep in our infrastructure, The Daily Beast reported Wednesday. From a report: Multiple divisions of the U.S. government are confronting the reality that code written by the Moscow-based security company is embedded deep within American infrastructure, in routers, firewalls, and other hardware -- and nobody is certain how to get rid of it. "It's messy, and it's going to take way longer than a year," said one U.S. official. "Congress didn't give anyone money to replace these devices, and the budget had no wiggle-room to begin with."
At issue is a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) enacted last December that requires the government to fully purge itself of "any hardware, software, or services developed or provided, in whole or in part," by Kaspersky Lab. The law was a dramatic expansion of an earlier DHS directive that only outlawed "Kaspersky-branded" products. Both measures came after months of saber rattling by the U.S., which has grown increasingly anxious about Kaspersky's presence in federal networks in the wake of Russia's 2016 election interference campaign.
At issue is a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) enacted last December that requires the government to fully purge itself of "any hardware, software, or services developed or provided, in whole or in part," by Kaspersky Lab. The law was a dramatic expansion of an earlier DHS directive that only outlawed "Kaspersky-branded" products. Both measures came after months of saber rattling by the U.S., which has grown increasingly anxious about Kaspersky's presence in federal networks in the wake of Russia's 2016 election interference campaign.
It's Trojan horses all the way down....
Al is looking into it. (He prefers Alphonse, BTW) He said the Kapersky shit is like Norton and is a bitch to get off of the machines.
It'd be best to just trash the machines and start with all new ones.
Alphonse knows a guy who knows a guy who can get really cheap machines. His name is Wong Wei Wang. His company is based in Beijing and is called (English translation) Friendly Not Government Controlled Computer Company. The Trump administration has already OKay'd it. Eric is such a great guy according to Wong.
The question to ask, as both a taxpayer and an IT guy is this: What's the "penalty" for failing to make the October deadline?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
The government is lucky this Kaspersky scare is bullshit, then. If this had been an actual emergency (e.g. the software were doing something bad, whether by design or due to some random bug that you can't fix because it's proprietary), sounds like everything would be totally fucked.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you can't get your Anti-Virus software off of your equipment, is it really anti-virus, or has it just become another virus?
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
bullshit. Do a week of training with one of their competitors, uninstall the old stuff, install the new stuff, call it a day. None of this is difficult. These are software programs designed to take care of security for end users.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
>> Congress didn't give anyone money to replace these devices, and the budget had no wiggle-room to begin with
In the real world, I'd go to Kaspersky's biggest competitors and say, "if you replace these guys on a one-to-one basis (at no charge this year), we'll give you their support contracts in future years."