Both are pretty serious problems and ones that massively would benefit society if changed. Of course that would require people to a) get over religion and b) get over the quasi-religious belief that people with a lot of money are somehow "good".
It basically went from "totally irrelevant as a personal risk" to "totally irrelevant as a personal risk". The purpose of eliminating freedoms is not to fight terrorism. That is just the pretext (i.e. propaganda-lie). The purpose of eliminating freedoms is tighter control over the population.
Even a cursory look throughout history shows that this is always what those in power are after and that is why they must be carefully watched and reminded whom they serve from time to time. Democracy was supposed to establish that control, but, not least due to media Gleichschaltung (by concentration in the hands of a small number of owners) and the media spreading fear at every opportunity, democracy has been thoroughly corrupted. The US is effectively already a (still relatively benign) police-state. The long-term perspective is full totalitarianism, usually in the form of fascism.
I am fully with you. Especially as I am far more likely to die cleaning my windows or crossing the road to go shopping, than by a terrorist. The price to pay here is really, really small and history has countless really awful examples what always happens when governments are not tightly kept under control.
Citizens that feel safe may begin to think about those that presume to lead them and other things that are obviously off. On the other hand, citizens that are in fear will grant the "authorities" any and all rights if they just promise to protect them. Hence you are perfectly right: Nobody in power has the slightest interest to make citizens safer.
I agree. But the stupid masses have accepted this flimsy propaganda story already. Let's hope Kaspersky survives this, because otherwise we all become notably less secure.
Indeed. The technique of the "Big Lie" (known a long time, but refined and documented by Goebbels) is to just tell people again and again what you want them to accept as truth. This technique is clearly employed here. The most obvious reason for this attack on Kaspersky is that they refuse to ignore NSA malware and do things that the tame US vendors would never dare to do. It does also not really matter whether Kaspersky gets hacked by Russian intelligence, as all other AV products are pretty likely to suffer exactly the same fate as Kaspersky. That they get singled out and that the proof presented so far is more than flimsy and stinks of having been manufactured fits the picture nicely.
That they are in government employee makes little difference, these people are criminal hackers. And not only do they lie routinely, they are trained to do so. And they are subject to politics, because they must follow orders. Hence the only thing we know is that this story rings true (because the Israelis are very good at lying), but that is it. This may well just be a favor to the US and helping in getting rid of an AV company that refuses to bow to the NSA. This story does not add any credibility to the theory that Kaspersky is under Russian control. If anything, it makes it more plausible that they are not.
They have held back computing for decades now. They have mostly killed diversity in computing. They have created a boring mono-culture where when they have a bad idea, everybody suffers. While they likely will go the way of IBM, if they dies faster, that would be even more beneficial all around.
Well, normally I would agree, but this one is not quite phishing anymore, it is more an OS dialog impersonation attack, and the user cannot really see what is going on. Make this dialog appear when it is reasonable to expect, and the user really does not have much of a chance.
With systemd, yes. Basically it crapped out on me the one time I forgot to remove it. Since then I remove it routinely, as my time is too valuable. Hence I have no data. Not with pulseaudio, as I do not use it. With network manager, I don't know. I did have obscure network problems recently, but I fixed them by hard-coding everything. Also with udev, which usually requires some rule adjustments. I actually have seriously considered getting rid of udev as well and going back to static device files. At least they are reliable.
Systemd and family become really bad as soon as you have something that is not quite standard. Used to be fine before, but now you have to do everything the One True Way.
Solaris basically went EOL recently when Oracle fired most of the Solaris 10 team. I do agree the situation is not good for the desktop at the moment, with the "best" option (Win10) being really bad.
It is however the standard thing that happens when customers allow a quasi-monopoly to form: They get screwed. While individually, there is very little blame, as a group the users and companies that "standardized" on Windows are mostly responsible for this mess.
I do know at least one large company that will go all web-app internally to prevent going to Win10. No idea what they want to use as OS, but it will be a web-terminal and can basically run on any OS were a good browser and a secure VPN possibility exists. Probably will be Linux or one of the xBSDs.
Side note: If you install Debian with sysvinit, it still works reliably. We have a ban on systemd in our company. Far too costly with the permanent problems it causes and the special needs it has.
It does not seem to be, not even for MS itself. They are constantly outing themselves as the incompetents they are with Win10. Nadella recently wrote something about MS being "sick" when he took it over. It seems to me that state persists and is getting both worse and more obvious.
It may be a good idea to run Kaspersky in addition to your regular scanner on everything suspicious. It may also be an excellent idea to buy their product to make sure they stay on the market. At least against US government malware, it seems they are currently getting the highest endorsement possible.
This is not how this goes. Kaspersky is a pretty good AV company. They have sensors and are probably finding NSA malware all on their own without being told about it. They may then get a request to remove certain signatures, though.
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That sounds like a felony wiretapping crime...
Maybe the EU needs to slap a $1B (or so) fine on them, and repeat as needed. Because the US sure as hell is not doing anything about this problem.
Both are pretty serious problems and ones that massively would benefit society if changed. Of course that would require people to a) get over religion and b) get over the quasi-religious belief that people with a lot of money are somehow "good".
To be fair, if you are fully on-board with the oppressors, live in a totalitarian regime can be pretty safe. Of course, you need to sell your soul.
It basically went from "totally irrelevant as a personal risk" to "totally irrelevant as a personal risk". The purpose of eliminating freedoms is not to fight terrorism. That is just the pretext (i.e. propaganda-lie). The purpose of eliminating freedoms is tighter control over the population.
Even a cursory look throughout history shows that this is always what those in power are after and that is why they must be carefully watched and reminded whom they serve from time to time. Democracy was supposed to establish that control, but, not least due to media Gleichschaltung (by concentration in the hands of a small number of owners) and the media spreading fear at every opportunity, democracy has been thoroughly corrupted. The US is effectively already a (still relatively benign) police-state. The long-term perspective is full totalitarianism, usually in the form of fascism.
Funny thing is that the original meaning of "Terrorism" is the rule of a government by fear.
I am fully with you. Especially as I am far more likely to die cleaning my windows or crossing the road to go shopping, than by a terrorist. The price to pay here is really, really small and history has countless really awful examples what always happens when governments are not tightly kept under control.
Citizens that feel safe may begin to think about those that presume to lead them and other things that are obviously off. On the other hand, citizens that are in fear will grant the "authorities" any and all rights if they just promise to protect them. Hence you are perfectly right: Nobody in power has the slightest interest to make citizens safer.
I agree. But the stupid masses have accepted this flimsy propaganda story already. Let's hope Kaspersky survives this, because otherwise we all become notably less secure.
Indeed. The technique of the "Big Lie" (known a long time, but refined and documented by Goebbels) is to just tell people again and again what you want them to accept as truth. This technique is clearly employed here. The most obvious reason for this attack on Kaspersky is that they refuse to ignore NSA malware and do things that the tame US vendors would never dare to do. It does also not really matter whether Kaspersky gets hacked by Russian intelligence, as all other AV products are pretty likely to suffer exactly the same fate as Kaspersky. That they get singled out and that the proof presented so far is more than flimsy and stinks of having been manufactured fits the picture nicely.
And the price for extreme stupidity goes to....
That they are in government employee makes little difference, these people are criminal hackers. And not only do they lie routinely, they are trained to do so. And they are subject to politics, because they must follow orders. Hence the only thing we know is that this story rings true (because the Israelis are very good at lying), but that is it. This may well just be a favor to the US and helping in getting rid of an AV company that refuses to bow to the NSA. This story does not add any credibility to the theory that Kaspersky is under Russian control. If anything, it makes it more plausible that they are not.
Or alternatively, they were stolen because of gross incompetence. I know which scenario is much more likely...
They have held back computing for decades now. They have mostly killed diversity in computing. They have created a boring mono-culture where when they have a bad idea, everybody suffers. While they likely will go the way of IBM, if they dies faster, that would be even more beneficial all around.
The technical term here is "vulnerability" and it is a symptom of a failed security design.
Then I see a far larger problem here. Seems to me they are _not_ prepared.
Well, normally I would agree, but this one is not quite phishing anymore, it is more an OS dialog impersonation attack, and the user cannot really see what is going on. Make this dialog appear when it is reasonable to expect, and the user really does not have much of a chance.
I still don't see the NSA telling Kaspersky about it's malware.
That is an issue on your side, not on mine...
With systemd, yes. Basically it crapped out on me the one time I forgot to remove it. Since then I remove it routinely, as my time is too valuable. Hence I have no data. Not with pulseaudio, as I do not use it. With network manager, I don't know. I did have obscure network problems recently, but I fixed them by hard-coding everything. Also with udev, which usually requires some rule adjustments. I actually have seriously considered getting rid of udev as well and going back to static device files. At least they are reliable.
Systemd and family become really bad as soon as you have something that is not quite standard. Used to be fine before, but now you have to do everything the One True Way.
Solaris basically went EOL recently when Oracle fired most of the Solaris 10 team. I do agree the situation is not good for the desktop at the moment, with the "best" option (Win10) being really bad.
It is however the standard thing that happens when customers allow a quasi-monopoly to form: They get screwed. While individually, there is very little blame, as a group the users and companies that "standardized" on Windows are mostly responsible for this mess.
I do know at least one large company that will go all web-app internally to prevent going to Win10. No idea what they want to use as OS, but it will be a web-terminal and can basically run on any OS were a good browser and a secure VPN possibility exists. Probably will be Linux or one of the xBSDs.
Side note: If you install Debian with sysvinit, it still works reliably. We have a ban on systemd in our company. Far too costly with the permanent problems it causes and the special needs it has.
It does not seem to be, not even for MS itself. They are constantly outing themselves as the incompetents they are with Win10. Nadella recently wrote something about MS being "sick" when he took it over. It seems to me that state persists and is getting both worse and more obvious.
It may be a good idea to run Kaspersky in addition to your regular scanner on everything suspicious. It may also be an excellent idea to buy their product to make sure they stay on the market. At least against US government malware, it seems they are currently getting the highest endorsement possible.
This is not how this goes. Kaspersky is a pretty good AV company. They have sensors and are probably finding NSA malware all on their own without being told about it. They may then get a request to remove certain signatures, though.
Definitely a possibility.
Well, good luck with that.