
Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working with Russian Intelligence - sethbannon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/kaspersky-lab-has-been-working-with-russian-intelligence?
======
autogeek
This is old news. I thought Bloomberg had found more evidence on this topic.

Here's Kaspersky's response to Bloomberg's article
:[https://usa.kaspersky.com/about/press-
releases/2017_kaspersk...](https://usa.kaspersky.com/about/press-
releases/2017_kaspersky-lab-response-clarifying-inaccurate-statements-
published-in-bloomberg-businessweek-on-july-11-2017)

------
joe_the_user
So, it is American intelligence officials who are concerned about this
situation?

At some time in the past, the US, as a democratic society might have done
something to separate offensive and defensive intelligence, used some method
to give us something like an assurance that concern by American officials
would mean that Kaspersky was doing something shady rather, say, that Kapersky
was one tool they couldn't use to spy (not that I know anything about the
situation at hand).

But as it is, the US (along with all the other states, of course) produced a
situation where there's no real difference between the "state actors", where
basically every software product from a given nation risks being requisitioned
as well be spyware for that nation.

Perhaps it's just as well and anyone caring about privacy will move to all
open source, defined builds and so-on.

Or perhaps just buy software from the smallest, least important nation.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _there 's no real difference between the "state actors"_

This is a classically bogus argument [1]. A foreign adversary,
constitutionally unbound, is more worrisome than a domestic actor who, while
having a more-legitimate threat of violence, also faces realistic odds of
retribution.

While throwing democracy under a bus seems to be in vogue nowadays, suggesting
moral or democratic equivalence between the Russian and American states is
absurd. Americans support the NSA, _et cetera_ [2] despite lots of messaging
to counter their agenda. A better argument would entail how the tech community
could communicate its message to American voters.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

[2] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-
america...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-
think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/)

~~~
kuschku
> This is a classically bogus argument [1]. A foreign adversary,
> constitutionally unbound, is more worrisome than a domestic actor who, while
> having a more-legitimate threat of violence, also faces realistic odds of
> retribution.

So, there is no difference between the two actors: I'm German, both are
foreign countries that have threatened to nuke Europe. (Well, at least Trump
has).

I don't see why I should trust the US more than Russia, both Trump and Putin
don't give a fuck about any other country and just want to destroy my life.

~~~
CrystalGamma
Same with me. I mistrust German intelligence agencies just the same, even
though they are supposed to be organs of my government. My stance here is
simple: if an institution has something to hide from me (barring personal
information) then that institution cannot be working in my interest, so I
can't trust them.

~~~
traviscj
I'm no fan of "three letter agencies" but it seems the problem isn't _you_
knowing certain information, it is identifying a set of "yous" who can know it
without compromising the purpose the organization is pursuing.

------
m88m
Oh I have another clickbait. American Companies have been working with the
NSA.

Common knowledge folks.

------
vectorEQ
if someone is suprised by this please, do yourself a favor, and become a
farmer or something...

~~~
chinathrow
But we might still be outraged and boycott their products, all right?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Nothing is stopping you but that's like saying you want to boycott Monsanto
products because of the latest misdeed to make the rounds in the news. You
should have assumed Kaspersky was working with Russian intelligence before
buying just like you should have assumed Monsanto was evil before buying.

Kapersky is one of Russia's top cybersecurity research institutions by default
because of the products they sell and the stuff they need to do to make those
products. Cooperation with Russian intelligence isn't really optional for
them. If they didn't want to cooperate they'd either be infiltrated making it
a non-issue or they'd be "convinced".

This is no different than Russia not wanting to use Win10 because they assume
that the NSA put in feature requests (or created the features themselves
without telling anyone at MSFT).

~~~
chinathrow
> Cooperation with Russian intelligence isn't really optional for them.

But that does in no way make it allright - from a consumer perspective. Am I
missing something?

~~~
Jonnax
Sure. But at the same time it would be foolish to assume that Symantec doesn't
work with the US security agencies or Sophos doesn't work with British
agencies.

In the worst case scenario, if the government wanted them to, they would have
to hand over anything they work on to continue operating.

~~~
PeanutCurry
This was my takeaway. My understanding of the top comment in the chain wasn't
that we shouldn't be offended. Just that we shouldn't be surprised. It would
be like being surprised that Boeing takes orders from the U.S. government
sometimes.

------
r721
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743092)

------
wrinkl3
For anyone who's been to their conferences/seminars, this is really easy to
guess from the way their employees talk. They love to paint the GRU as a cool
older brother all while dissing the CIA for carrying out endless attacks
against their clients.

~~~
jomkr
I got drunk with one of their employees at a conference in London and he
started loudly singing "The Internationale". It really annoyed the yanks, I
found it quite funny.

------
nthcolumn
This article was presented before and here it is again.

Some other people intent on giving Eugene a hard time recently:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-kasperskylab-
analysis-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-kasperskylab-analysis-
idUSKBN19Z0EH)

True, it must be hard to remain objective when this happens:
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/01/kaspe...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/01/kaspersky-labs-top-investigator-reportedly-arrested-in-
treason-probe/)

On the recent embassy ban a former CIA station chief said it will mostly
affect the russian staff whom they all assumed to be spies anyway as they
suspected that nobody would get a job there unless they had been vetted by
GRU.

May we assume they would think the same for KL employees?

Maybe US intelligence is still butthurt over exposure of and then also loss of
tools - Equation group et al? Can you imagine how much crapola is coming down
the old shitpipe currently - hacked elections, shadowbrokers, HBO/mandiant...?
The list of agenda items on the briefing meetings just gets longer and longer
and the politicians just get crazier and crazier.

Oh Lordy!

------
oelmekki
I can get why such a thing would be scary to a government. But really, there's
no reason this should be about Russia. "Government runs closed source software
distributed by foreign company" should sound scary whatever government it is,
wherever the company is based.

Governments need to be able to audit the code they run. If there is a place
where the "100% libre software" ambition should rule, it's there (provided
govs indeed have people who audit code, obviously).

------
campuscodi
Ah, this laughable article with no actual proof... thought this died when it
was debunked and ridiculed online last month. The HN frontpage is the last
place where I expected to see it again.

~~~
notfromhere
Yeah, because Russian intelligence would never co-opt its economic assets for
espionage.

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crb002
Kaspersky also probably has dealings with GHCQ/NSA. If you are a top vendor
then nation state actors are going to want to subcontract out non-sensitive
duties.

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dogma1138
Government agencies employ local industry resources especially in cutting edge
technical fields, in other news water is wet.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft has worked with US domestic law
enforcement on similar "active countermeasures" against hackers targetting its
customers for years.

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atakurt
it would be fun if it has been working with cia/nsa.

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technologia
No shit.

------
westmeal
Isn't Kaspersky a Russian name?

~~~
konart
Well, this is a russian company founded by a russian whose name is Evgeny
Kaspersky. I'd say family name origins are not russian, but I don't think you
are interested in etymology or onomatology here.

