Kaspersky users in US please start looking for alternatives.
I kindda have a mixed feeling about this, as Kaspersky often provide useful information via their blogs and report system vulnerabilities, etc. And unlike Huawei / Dahua etc, I dont see a real report about Kaspersky acting as Russia’s agent.
However, allowing adversary’s companies accessing their critical / business systems makes no sense to me as well.
I feel like the U.S. is butthurt that Kaspersky found that iPhone back door on their phone and they also found the same exact backdoor on every iPhone that was working at the Kremlin too.
Something smells a little fishy around here.
I guess they shouldn’t have given up the backdoor that Apple and the alphabet boys implanted in the kernel.
Don’t mind me though, I’m just crazy and rambling away.
FUD, the word you’re looking for is FUD.
Personally I find there’s better sources for threat intel, stuff like Mandiant (google cloud security now maybe?), CrowdStrike, and some of the security people on social media who do writeups
What a bunch of hypocrites the US is, in terms of global surveillance there’s no one worse than them, they’re way ahead of Russia and China combined, but you always have to denounce the others.
It’s more political than anything else, pitiful.
Hm, I am a bit pizzled right now.
Look, for people having trouble with Russia / China regime, they mostly dont have issues with US / EU regime so they can use US / EU alternatives for whatever services / software they need.
But for US / EU citizens, you probably wont want to use China / Russia alternatives as you might dislike them even more. I am not sure if they have many good options.
Back to the topic, I think it is a natural trend, but I think they should (prob. they have and I just missed it) provide solid proofs to justify the ban. US should not act just like China regime, they should be better than that.
They don’t need proof that anything has happened.
“We fully believe that … the Russian government is either now using Kaspersky or certainly would be willing to use Kaspersky,” the official said, adding that the Commerce Department’s Trump-era authority “allows us to act proactively, even in the absence of concrete examples” of collusion.
(source)
Of course, there are mountains of evidence of Russia launching cyberattacks against the US in general, even if none of them have anything to do with Kaspersky. It doesn’t seem very unreasonable for the US to want other countries out of their critical IT infrastructure.
I agree the same calls where made in several EU countries years ago. Kaspersky did great work with Europol and the Dutch High Tech Crime Police against ransomware, but got kicked out of the project for the same reasons.
It also should be highlighted that we might not have all intel to know if this decision was justified. It is very reasonable to believe that governments know more but are unwilling to share that publicly.
The problem is that if it’s not an American or European product, then it must be espionage, and that’s pathetic.
It’s purely political, the Americans just want to have a monopoly on everything, they banned Huawei for the same reasons, they also want to ban TikTok and now Kaspersky and all without proof.
On the other hand, the evidence of spying by Google, Meta, Microsoft and anti-virus software (the list is far too long) is well known to everyone.
It is crazy how people will immediately and harshly polarise opinions when it comes to politics, in some people’s minds if you support one of America’s international security decisions, then you are automatically turning a blind eye toward it’s many wrongdoings, and mindlessly cricising (or turning a blind eye toward) China and Russia. Believe it or not you can criticise all countries simultaneously, as each country makes both bad and good decisions, with this ratio differing from country to country, it’s not all in, i.e., you either hate a country or love it, and hate others. Complexity arises since governments are made of many members with different roles and power, as humans they are too dynamic.
The problem is relying on companies who are governed by hostile governments. They can turn on you and in that case you do not want to rely on them on keeping your network running, not spreading propaganda, keeping you secure.
I just don’t really think there is a reason to ever buy software produced in non-democratic countries, so banning Kaspersky is just like banning software from North Korea in my book. Both very justifiable.
If the US started banning products like this from democratic countries like Proton in Switzerland, for example, then there’d be a serious problem.
The thing with Kaspersky’s product specifically is that they don’t even need a backdoor. Because it’s an antivirus, all Kaspersky has to do is not detect some malware developed by the Russian military, and that is impossible to prove because it’s something that didn’t happen.
edit: the most unfortunate part of this ban is that I suspect people will switch to McAfee or Norton, which are both objectively bad products.
Isn’t AdGuard a Russian company? AdGuard is a good DNS provider and a somewhat decent VPN provider.
Ran by Russians, registered on Cyprus.
All of them are bad options. Windows Defender is, in my opinion, the only reasonable option, but it still sucks. MAC, strong permission model, and verified boot are the real, good solutions, not AVs.
I think that is a fair criticism of AdGuard, and probably my biggest problem with it, but their products are open source, and they run all their servers outside of Russia so they at least can’t be trivially seized by Russian authorities.
Also they’re technically based in Cyprus, but with offices in Russia they can still pretty easily be pressured.
Supposedly their employees are also relocating to Cyprus & elsewhere, not sure how much that has actually happened.
I dont see a real report about Kaspersky acting as Russia’s agent.
Evgeny Kaspersky has been informally collaborating with the FSB for a long time Евгений Касперский уже давно неформально сотрудничает с ФСБ - Ведомости
Kaspersky In 1987 he graduated from the 4th (technical) faculty of the KGB Higher School[10] (currently the faculty is known as the Institute of Cryptography, Communications and Informatics of the Academy of the FSB of Russia) in Moscow Касперский, Евгений Валентинович — Википедия
Grass is green, sky is blue, Kaspersky is FSB officer. It’s obvious.
Operation Triangulation Operation Triangulation: The last (hardware) mystery | Securelist led to Russia, China and possibly other governments banning Iphones for government use. Apple and US Natsec apparatus were heavily impacted.
Tbh, I don’t want us to be impacted by US Intel agencies’ information and decisions. Yet, it’s nearly impossible to operate in countries such as Russia or China without deep collaboration. I hate being suspicious products made in these countries, they can be just innocent people. But that’s the nature of those countries.
In terms of espionage, the Americans are far worse than Russia and China combined, they represent the very definition of the word espionage.
The Russians and the Chinese have understood this, which is why they’re replacing everything American with local products, while Europeans love them and want more.
They want to ban TickTock but accept Meta, Google, MS, Apple Amazon, anti-viruses, etc. without batting an eyelid, pitiful.