Comment by huxley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by huxley | Hacker News Reader

Good job on Dr. Web on finding this and trying to do the right thing but these quotes give a different context than you'd get from the article title and lede:

"Sharov believes that Apple’s attempt to shut down its monitoring server was an honest mistake."

"In Apple’s defense, it may not have recognized Dr. Web as a credible security firm when the company contacted Apple earlier this month–I hadn’t heard of the firm either until its discovery and analysis of the Flashback botnet."

It looks like Apple wasn't the only one surprised by this:

"But the better-known security firm Kaspersky confirmed Dr. Web’s findings on Friday. A Kaspersky representative said it hadn’t contacted Apple with its findings and hadn’t had any direct communication with the company, and Kaspersky researcher Kurt Baumgartner wrote in a statement that 'from what we’ve seen, Apple is taking appropriate action by working with the larger internet security community to shut down the Flashfake [also known as Flashback] C2 domains. Apple works vigorously to protect its brand and wants to rectify this.'"

Oh, Kaspersky couldn't be possibly surprised by existence of Dr. Web. The company is well established and has good market share in the former USSR. I remember using their products back in 1999 or so.

The first quote is from the forbes writer and not Kaspersky.

Huxley seemed to be using the quote to suggest that Kapersky didn't know of them.

Either they didn't mean to or they are mistaken.

Yeah, Dr. Web is very well-known in Russia, and among the wider security community. They have some very talented people working for them, and, as far as I know, Dr. Web is still one of the only AVs that can disinfect the Rustock.C rootkit/virus successfully.

I've been in the security industry for about 10 years, and never heard of them. Most of my peers had the same reaction - "Who?"

That kind of "we didn't know" will only get you so far in this day and age where 1 second on google will get you a wikipedia page on dr web saying they've been around since 1992.

The world is bigger than firms who are big in america and that kind of american centric thinking also won't go down well on the web.

It's not American-centric thinking, it's Apple being Apple.

American centric? You realize Kaspersky is Russian as well?

Everybody at Kaspersky knows who Dr. Web is. It's a household name in Russia.

So it's probably the article's honest mistake if you infer otherwise from it.

But once you dig down, it becomes a less rosy picture for Dr. Web. The citation for the 1992 date doesn't actually appear to contain that information. It's a bunch of rather poorly written(perhaps by non-English speakers) reviews that don't actually give much useful information about the company or product. Secondly, the website that posted all the test results has not had any activity for over a year.

Their download.com cleaner software has not been updated since 2010.

Finally, a Google search comes up with their main website, wikipedia page, news stories with about their discovery, and several other links to sites that feel like antivirus phishing pages rather than legitimate links.

All-in-all, there isn't enough content to really judge them as absolutely trustworthy. It's really a brand recognition issue in a space where trust is absolutely key in evaluating claims. Kaspersky has the brand and trust worldwide. Dr. Web appears to have it in Russia, but not nearly as much outside of the country.

I am surprised that author of the article wasn't aware of Dr. Web! Well, I had an impression that any self-respecting security expert will be aware of "Russian big two". Dr. Web is very well known, especially for their powerful malware detection and removal engine. I always keep Dr. Web CureIT handy in USB sticks.

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