
Eugene Kaspersky: What Wired Is Not Telling You - jonemo
http://eugene.kaspersky.com/2012/07/25/what-wired-is-not-telling-you-a-response-to-noah-shachtmans-article-in-wired-magazine/
======
1gor
Original WIRED article looks like _argumentum ad hominem_ attack on a
technology company for its alleged links to Russian government.

It is sad that propaganda war between the US and Russia is spreading to
'technology' news media. We are better off discussing technology, not
politics.

~~~
rickmb
Discussing technology without politics is sticking your head in the sand.
Technology has a political impact, and technological choices are politically
influenced.

Half the topics on HN would be very different if you took away the political
context. Unless you only want to discuss programming languages at an academic
level, it's almost impossible to ignore the politics.

~~~
photon137
"...and technological choices are politically influenced"

Nope. Technological choices are solely influenced by the problem one is trying
to solve. The course of war, peace and espionage may be determined by politics
but the choice of technology is totally influenced by the problems war and
espionage may present that technology needs to be able to solve. You can't
build a "liberal" radar or a "conservative" radar or a downright "communist"
radar. You can just build a radar to detect aircraft.

~~~
eli
You're seriously suggesting cyber security research has nothing to do with
politics?

Technology is not an independent force of nature. It's the product of people,
and people are inherently connected to politics.

~~~
jessedhillon
People: let me provide a little advice, please. If you click on the poster's
name you can see their avg karma. You don't have to respond to just any dumb
thing said out here, especially not when a person's comments are consistently
voted as not useful -- e.g., photon137. That's why those scores are public.

When someone tries to cast a complicated political question like this in terms
of yup and nope, just assume they are a dumbass and move along. And have faith
that other reasonable people will do the same.

~~~
photon137
Really? You've to resort to name-calling rather than provide a logical
argument as to why my statements would be wrong?

Would you have called me a dumbass if we'd have met in real-life? Or would you
have been more civil?

Should I assume this representative of your behaviour towards people you
haven't met face to face? Or do you think people have a "karma" number
floating on top of their heads when they walk about?

~~~
jessedhillon
First, I didn't say you're a dumbass. I said, assume that the person is a
dumbass. In real life, yes I would assume that you're a dumbass if you had
given this kind of argument.

I also would have ignored you and moved on if I had heard you giving this kind
of opinion. If pressed to give a response, I would have said it's not a
serious argument. And the point is that people don't have to respond to
everything that is said, and additionally, it's preferable that they don't as
that leads to wasted efforts and irrelevant discussion. I was responding to
the effort dedicated to your argument.

Personally, how I determine whether or not an argument is dumb is if the first
formulation of the argument does not consider and respond to the most obvious
challenge. Yours does not consider for example, that a nobody would be making
a radar dish if it weren't for politics, not does it consider that the whole
history of technology has been driven largely by military (and thus,
political) needs. That seems to be a very obvious hurdle to your argument,
which as I understand it is basically a semantic game where the term
"technology" is confined to "a technician and the breadboard or terminal in
front of him/her."

That you kicked off a semantic exchange with a flat out "nope" just seems
smug, making it all the more amazing that the subsequent argument was so
naive.

~~~
jessedhillon
Actually, let me just say this: I'm sorry I called you a dumbass. That was out
of line, regardless of what I think about your argument or the way you
presented it.

I'm sorry.

------
notatoad
For anybody else who missed the original article, this seems to be it:
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/>

------
1337biz
A while ago I thought about what a perfect gateway Antivirus software would
make to gain access to millions of machines. In order to stay up to date they
are allowed to make regular calls home, are proprietary, and most often for
end users even given away for free. Motivated by this post I just went through
a list of the Worldwide Antivirus Vendor Market Share[1], looked up their
country of origin, and I have to admit that I find the fragmentation of the
industry and the internationalization quite remarkable. Of cause I have no
datapoints for comparison, but I still find it interesting that so many
nations are home to their very own Antivirus software provider.

Company Marketshare CountryOfOrigin

AVAST SOFTWARE 12.37% Czech Republic

AVG TECHNOLOGIES 12.37% Czech Republic

AVIRA GMBH 12.29% Germany

MICROSOFT CORP. 11.24% United States

ESET SOFTWARE 9.98% Slovakia

SYMANTEC CORP. 8.77% United States

KASPERSKY LABS 7.98% Russia

MCAFEE, INC. 4.50% United States

PANDA SECURITY 4.18% Spain

COMODO GROUP 2.79% United States

TREND MICRO, INC. 2.15% Japan

PC TOOLS SOFTWARE 2.00% Australia

EMSI SOFTWARE GMBH 1.16% Germany

SOFTWIN 1.11% Romania

F-SECURE CORP. 0.95% Finland

OTHERS 6.16%

[1] [http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/OPSWAT-Market-
Shar...](http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/OPSWAT-Market-Share-Report-
June-2011.pdf)

~~~
SoapSeller
Microsoft Security Essentials was(and I believe still) developed in Israel.

------
zht
rebuttal to Eugene's rebuttal:
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/kaspersky-indy/>

~~~
smsm42
Schachman alleges that Medvedev's visit to Kaspesky Lab and work for Russia's
major government bank somehow means that Kaspersky has nefarious links to the
government. This is baloney. It's like saying if Obama visits Facebook or
Google headquarters these companies now are CIA outlets, or saying if the Fed
hires Symantec to secure their networks Symantec is now linked to US
government.

Of course Central bank of Russia would hire leading Russian security company
to secure their network, who else they would hire? What's surprising in that?
Of course leading politician may visit a company that is internationally known
for its success, especially Medvedev who insisted on emphasizing the "modern
hi-tech president" image. Cooperation between security researchers and
cybercrime divisions of security services is also nothing new - what else
security researchers would do with their findings? They can't prosecute
computer criminals themselves... And of course they would get licensed by
Russian security services - how else one could get government contracts, which
in every country are not negligible source of income for many companies?

Making it sound as if pretty standard business practices and realities - which
apply both to such undeniably corrupt country as Russia and to the US and to
many other developed countries - as a sign of some ominous secrets is a
journalistic malpractice. It may sound to somebody uninformed as there's
something shady there - but in fact there's nothing in all that stuff. There
might be secrets hidden somewhere - but Schachman findings are extremely weak
in that regard.

~~~
knewter
> It's like saying if Obama visits Facebook or Google headquarters these
> companies now are CIA outlets

I feel like you should have used a better analogy, since Facebook is
effectively a CIA outlet. They received funding from them.

~~~
brown9-2
got a citation?

~~~
Rastafarian
Do you really believe Facebook is not sending all their data to CIA?

~~~
smsm42
Yes, I do. What CIA would do with so many lolcats? Unless they found a way to
make lolcat-powered drones, in which case it is really scary.

Seriously, though, what CIA would do with such amount of useless data? I could
in principle believe Facebook cooperates with targeted surveillance requests
(though doing something secret on facebook is incredibly stupid, but there are
stupid terrorists too), sending all their data to CIA would be pretty useless.

~~~
Rastafarian
Information is power. And the guys in and around CIA are starving for power.

------
at-fates-hands
C'mon people. How many "former" KGB agents do you know go completely legit and
not have some ties to the Kremlin? Unfortunately, their track record with
former spies is pretty well documented.

Once an agent, always an agent.

~~~
huhtenberg
C'mon, you surely must know that the KGB outlet he graduated from was a math
school on steroids, not the 007 training facility. The chances of him still
being an agent _because of that_ are well comparable to being simply hard-
pressed into cooperation after his company acquired a momentum.

~~~
at-fates-hands
Most of the famous "Cambridge Five" studied languages and history and were
some of the most successful Russian spies of the 1950's. Just because he
studied math does not excuse him from his association with the KGB.

I'm not saying he's still active, but those relationships are for life, and
you don't just walk away from the KGB/FSB unscathed. Just ask Alexander
Litvinenko.

~~~
huhtenberg
You are refuting a point that I didn't make.

------
duaneb
Kaspersky was definitely not the first to document Flame[r]:
<http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf>

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
They may simply have been unaware of other documentation on it.

Or too proud, of course.

------
kalleboo
I have no doubt that Kaspersky has close ties to the FSB and Kremlin. Just as
I have no doubt that U.S. security companies have close ties to the CIA/FBI.
Pick your poison.

------
gori
The tag on the Wired rebuttal to the rebuttal: Crazy Ivans.

That's just bad. I really thought Wired were above that. I guess I was wrong.

------
lbcadden3
Both sides are weak. Sounds like a personal thing frankly.

------
Tloewald
I hate to break it to him, but Indiana Jones is a fictional character and,
were he a real person, would have been considered a terrible, terrible
archeologist -- on par with 19th century "archeologists" who dynamited ruins
and chiseled choice bits off monuments.

~~~
huhtenberg
So, basically, you are saying that Kaspersky thinks that Indiana Jones was
real. What a thoughtful nitpick.

~~~
Tloewald
No, that Kaspersky used a bizarre example to illustrate a dubious point.

------
ucee054
For the same reasons that I expect Kaspersky corp to be attached at the hip to
the FSB, I expect Oracle and Facebook to be attached at the hip to the CIA.

------
nsns
Did he just use Indiana Jones (a fictional character) as a precedent for
himself?

~~~
jcitme
I don't find it unusual. He's building rapport with a reader base by
referencing american pop culture, and possibly knowing that many linkbait-y
blogs will jump on this as a hook. Nothing too weird, but imo more of a way to
bring publicity to his rebuttal than an actual argument point.

~~~
nsns
To me, it seemed rhetorically counter-productive, but its a minor point
really.

