Alas, while Russian (and Chinese) general disinterest in f'ing with you does help, their equally developed general disinterest in your well-being means they might have incentive to sell or trade with entities more... interested.
Alas, while Russian (and Chinese) general disinterest in f'ing with you does help, their equally developed general disinterest in your well-being means they might have incentive to sell or trade with entities more... interested.
Petya with M.E.DOC is a good example, Russians burned quite a significant attack infrastructure there. They could have sold that access to "someone" but the price (under $1mil in my opinion) isn't worth the sort of chaos it caused in ukraine (majority of companies in ukraine used that software I believe). My point is, if they did backdoor kasperskyOS, it wouldn't be used for a financial end, maybe to "show off" their capability, a retaliation to your government screwing with them,etc... but certainly not a financial end.
Frankly, I'd be happy if governments stay out of securiing civilians when it comes to computers and the internet. Tired of being a meaningless pawn to be discarded whenever convenient to do so.