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Comment by omonra | Hacker News Reader

Too bad the article doesn't mention that Kaspersky actually is very closely tied with the FSB (ie KGB) - most likely he works for them. That doesn't mean the original article is untrue - just that the 'research' really comes from Russian spies.

Profile here: http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/

"Kaspersky’s rise is particularly notable—and to some, downright troubling—given his KGB-sponsored training, his tenure as a Soviet intelligence officer, his alliance with Vladimir Putin’s regime, and his deep and ongoing relationship with Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB."

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It should come as no surprise that a Russian anti virus vendor is the one reporting about all this NSA software. Kaspersky has less to loose and more to gain then their western counterparts and the Russian government would probably be happy to help even if Kaspersky didn't already have these ties.

The question is: is Kaspersky going to abuse all that trust and good will they are gathering?

hmm. even snowden lives in russia now. hmm.

the sad side effect of the moral elite proving hollow is that those you may consider enemies might become allies. Despite everything there is little proof of malice at kaspersky while the same cant be said for many companies in the west.

If the FSB is funding research that brings unwanted transparency to the NSA, allowing us to better understand and criticize the US corporations and agencies compliment with them, then I welcome it. I doubt it is the case but if your fantasy turns out to be correct they would also deserve some poli sci props.

> Malice

Have proof of actual malice being committed? Intelligence gathering in of itself isn't malicious. That's literally the very reason for the NSA's existence. It's like saying the FBI is malicious because they "investigate". That's what they do, that's their job. I'd be more pissed if they weren't doing this sort of thing. I'd wonder where the hell my tax dollars are going.

The only thing that bothers me is when they spy on their own citizens, us. I have no problem with them spying or hacking Russia, China or Iran. Their job is to protect their country and their allies from foreign aggression and international criminal organizations. When you wake up in the morning, China, Russia, Iran, Etc... are all still going to try and hack U.S businesses, governmental services and try to gain access to classified information. Pretending like these acts don't happen doesn't make them go away.

American citizens have been involved in planning and executing terrorist attacks, identified as enemy combattants and even been targetted for drone strikes. If foreign terrorists operate in the US, the only way to find them is to search. That means looking at everyone's communications, citizen or not.

I'm not an American, so it would be wrong of me to assert what you or your government should or should not do in this regard. However in general I think GCHQ and the NSA have a case for some of the kinds of monitoring they are doing, I just think it's lacking in legal basis and appropriate oversight. They have shown repeatedly that we can't trust them.

Both data from foreign citizens and from your own citizens are useful, but usefulness shouldn't be the only consideration.

If you have lots of private information about someone that means you have power over that person. For starters it makes blackmail a whole lot easier. In combination with data about other people it helps you determine who you have to remove from a group to make that group collapse.

Now if somebody has this sort of power about some foreigners, that's not really a big problem for you country. But if somebody has that power about the entire population of your own country, that's a bit worse. That somebody could disable any form of democracy by silencing citizen protests before they even start while covertly controlling key politicians.

If communism has thought us anything it's that you don't want anybody to have intimate knowledge over large parts of your population, it doesn't tend to end well. Oversight is a nice idea but there was already supposed to be all kinds of oversight which apparently failed. I don't really trust oversight in things this important.

    >The question is: is Kaspersky going to abuse all that trust and good will they are gathering?

There are a dozen or so American companies that most would have hoped would stand up to domestic intelligence companies, rather than take the safe route of cooperating.

Was the power abused or was it co-opted? Will a Russian company fare any better against their own government?

The instances where a company does business with a government are not that uncommon. It is kind of stepping outside the pure commercial domain into being partly a public sector entity/institution. Considering the stakes of public information security (or even that of national defense), I come to think that this kind of deal should become one of governments' concerns in every country and should become an institutionalized part of their public service like police (or a government body like the information agency) and be funded openly by governments themselves.

why is that "too bad"?

How does talking about the messenger change the message?

Because 'researchers' and 'russian spy agency' sounds very different. Former are motivated by desire to shed light on questionable behavior, the latter to inflict damage on their adversary (while engaging in worse practices themselves).

Competition is good for the public. If American and Russian spy agencies call each other out on bad behaviour, everyone profits.

Only if the behavior they call out actually happened. If they start fabricating evidence of bad behavior that never happened then that's not a good thing.

What do you mean by worse practices? Are you saying Russian spy agencies have more sophisticated capabilities? Do they target more innocent people?

Even if it was the KGB instead of Kaspersky that discovered this it doesn't change the fact we put spyware into hardware firmware.

Their motives are irrelevant if their findings are verified.

I've got no problem with anyone inflicting damage on the NSA. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.

> How does talking about the messenger change the message?

We need to judge the messenger's integrity in order to judge the message's accuracy. Putin might say there are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

We can't rely on plausibility. Good propaganda is plausible, and the Russian intelligence services are very good at propaganda.

Is there an antivirus company with NSA ties to report on Russian viruses ?

A dumpload of companies and media outlets immediately blaming NK for the Sony hacks. It's not Russia, but close enough.

Here is the break down ordered by approximate market share descending and the "country of origin":

  * Microsoft - US
  * Avast - Czech Republic
  * AVG -  Czech Republic
  * ESET - Slovakia 
  * Symantec - US
  * Avira - Germany
  * Kaspersky - Russia
  * Malwarebytes - US
  * McAfee - US
  * COMODO - US
  * Bitdefender - Romania
  * Panda - Spain

To be fair, Kaspersky does a pretty good job of reporting on even Russian originated banking trojans and the like.

And now I'm wondering, why isn't there an nation agnostic open-source antivirus ?

Oh, I almost forgot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_AntiVirus#Effectiveness

But it's not famous enough...

F-Secure - Finland - https://www.f-secure.com/weblog/

Kaspersky's son was kidnapped and held for a 3 million Euro ransom in 2011.

I think that's about as relevant to this article.

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