Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by DarkKomunalec on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @07:23AM (#14743191)

As always, any implication that all closed-source software, regardless of company, suffers from similar issues, is conveniently absent. Just as it was during the VW emissions scandal - it's the cheating that was problematic, not that consumers are effectively in the dark about how most of their products operate, and deliberately prevented (successfully or not) from finding out (personally, or done on their behalf by others).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by hellbanner on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @12:52PM (#14745734)

Do you think because the implications of open-source software would threaten the economic model & world that the writer lives in?

Or that it's just an oversight and they just want to earn clicks? I think it's the latter, even if it's in effect the former (unintentioally).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by DarkKomunalec on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @08:40AM (#14751965)

I don't think this writer omitted it intentionally. I think it's because journalists that are too at-odds with corporate (or other dominant narrative) just have a harder time in their career. No-one gets censored, except in rare cases - they just don't have their contract extended. See https://cartoonistsrights.org/u-s-cartoonist-fired-after-cri... , but I imagine it's usually handled more subtly.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by hellbanner on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @11:44AM (#14753476)

"In a Facebook post following his firing, Friday wrote that the incident showed “how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country.”"

Indeed.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by codedokode on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @08:13AM (#14751819)

Even worse, in some countries disassembling proprietary software to analyse its behaviour can be prohibited (at least they write this in EULA).

And modern OS have no protection against backdoors: desktop OS allow apps to do whatever they want, mobile OS like Android have privileges separation but don't allow user to control Internet traffic: you cannot run iptables or ban an app from accessing the network.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by thephyber on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @02:13PM (#14746542)

I think the Bloomberg reporting goes beyond that. They claim lots of networking hardware comes pre-installed with Kaspersky software that the end-user may not even be aware of.

I can't find specific products so I don't know whether this is just Dell-preinstalled crapware that can be wiped with an OS reinstall or some sort of embedded device where the end user has no interface to disable/uninstall it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence by m103forme on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @05:58PM (#14748446)

Seeing how horrible and intrusive their endpoint AV is, I can't imagine them "sneaking" any of their products into anything.

[ Parent | on HN ]