Kaspersky has been a pain in the ass of the status quo because they are Russian and so it's difficult to control them and rein them in. Lots of exploits depends on the cooperation and complacency of security companies that are in the pocket of the various governments. Kaspersky wasn't one of these, or at least in the pockets of Russia, and so had to be compromised to try to control their oversight on security and to further the chances of exploits succeeding. Good on them for detecting the exploit, now they know that they are valid targets for this sort of thing.

I'm sure it knew it was a target for this kind of thing since they did exhibit bias. That is to say they showed greater interest in exposing western gov't hacking capabilities and activities than they did in exposing Russian and Chinese govt actors in the same arena.

I'm sure this is no surprise to them.

> than they did in exposing Russian and Chinese govt actors in the same arena.

That's the job of Western companies. Keeps everyone honest. Western companies have as much bias as anyone, they are just good at covering it up with rhetoric... and Americans are good at deluding themselves about their own bias and Nationalism which is no different from anyone else's.

> On balance, with the current regimes in those countries, I prefer the western alternative to these regimes. It's not as if they are equivalent just with a different opinion. I truly prefer my western govt's over Russia and China's.

I do too. However, no one is as clean, just, and fair as they make themselves out to be. Everyone who plays geopolitics is dirty as shit. I like my government because it treats me well enough, ask other people and they might not have the same opinions.

On balance, with the current regimes in those countries, I prefer the western alternative to these regimes. It's not as if they are equivalent just with a different opinion. I truly prefer my western govt's over Russia and China's, no doubts.

sounds like picking-of-lesser-evil discussion to me, which is still a bit sad considering topic...

what a world we got ourselves into! :)

The best world yet.

The worst too...

I kind of agree, but in a merely technical way :) I like the oriental philosophical outlook, so basically, I would have to say, the world is simply what it is. Labelling it "good" or "bad", in an absolute-judgement kind of way, is arbitrary and useless.

But here, the topic was very specific - to say that picking the lesser evil is a bad thing is actually, I'm sorry to say, spoiled. Being able to pick at all is a luxury, which some do not have to this day. And let's not even go into all the other problems we no longer face today, at least in large parts of the world.

That's not to say we don't have a tonne of work ahead of us. We probably always will. And criticism is essential in making progress. But just saying that "the world" has gone bad is not helpful criticism, it's defeatist. Because, what can we do if it has indeed gone bad? Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

<s> Of course the investigation into the Belgacom hack was just 'rhetoric'. No real action was taken, the CEO of the company that lead the investigation did not explicitly attribute the hack, just rhetoric. </s>

In all honesty, I still think that western security companies have less bias than those working in less free societies.

> That is to say they showed greater interest in exposing western gov't hacking capabilities and activities than they did in exposing Russian and Chinese govt actors in the same arena.

Kaspersky early detected, nailed, and exposed an advanced nation-state attack on its network.

BBC spin - "Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity firm is hacked"

Who is trying to control and rein in antivirus companies?

That is, nobody: they claim they have never received a request to not detect malware.

I think you need to look more closely at the list of companies and their locations in the second paragraph, and the list of companies that actually replied to the letter.

But we don't actually have to speculate about what the silence of the american companies means: they are quite open about their policies: http://slashdot.org/story/01/11/28/173201/symantec-will-not-...

>Symantec chief researcher Eric Chien stated that provided a hypothetical keystroke logging tool was used only by the FBI, Symantec would avoid updating its antivirus tools to detect such a Trojan, echoing a similar stance Network Associates allegedly took with its McAfee anti-virus software earlier this week. 'If it was under the control of the FBI, with appropriate technical safeguards in place to prevent possible misuse, and nobody else used it -- we wouldn't detect it,' said Chien. 'However we would detect modified versions that might be used by hackers.

Antivirus companies do not need government coercion not to detect malware. They do a pretty good job of that all by themselves.

The Illuminati. Come on. As a security researcher, you should know this. /s

That kind of conspiracy is just too fragile to be believable. While the opsec of such coersion operation with a company full of unpatriotic foreigners sounds like an absolute nightmare, it's also much much safer and much easier to build your APT attack vector not be caught by your targets' AV solution.

Kaspersky is also much easier to control than most AV vendors, Eugene has often been quite positive about Russia spying on its citizens more aggressively than the US does, and he has deep connections with other powerful people of Russia.

It's spelled Israel, FWIW.