Citing national security, US will ban Kaspersky anti-virus software in July
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The fact that no executives from Kaspersky have fallen out of windows makes me think they play ball with the Russian government.
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This makes sense. AV software typically installs services that gives it access rights to do almost anything. It can be weaponized to be worse than a typical malware infection by the AV company with a single update, and since it is "protecting" the system the user will have no idea about what it's doing.
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Unfortunate, but not unpredictable.
I used Kaspersky for several years, and (at least at the time) it fast and undemanding, with good turnaround on virus signatures.
But doing business with a hostile country is just bad business.
I used Kaspersky for several years, and (at least at the time) it fast and undemanding, with good turnaround on virus signatures.
But doing business with a hostile country is just bad business.
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It would be interesting to know how many major U.S. companies who claim to be safeguarding personal data have this garbage running on any of their systems.
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Hopefully they'll ban McAfee & Norton next. That would go a long way to making a wide swathe of PCs more secure & reliable.
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That seems to not actually be true. They have never denied that Russian law exists, or that Russian companies are required to comply with government requests. Calling it "BS" and "political" isn't actually the same as denying the claim.
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I don't think there should be any trade between the US and Russia period.
What could they possibly have we can't get anywhere else?
Edit- Cue the Russian bots. Nonsensical messages are on the way.
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To me this is similar to China and TikTok. They are beholden to their govt. Whether it has happened or not is irrelevant. The fact that it could is the point.
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For the time being, accessible raw materials.
Fun fact: we went to great lengths to clandestinely purchase titanium from the Soviet Union throughout the cold war.
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It's not a good idea for any company to have silent remote admin control over so many computers. I'm not even OK with Apple and Google doing it. Publicly traded companies don't have your interests in mind.
A good fix would be for the government to give grants to beneficial open source software. Open source is not impossible to hijack, but at least it would be seen.
A good fix would be for the government to give grants to beneficial open source software. Open source is not impossible to hijack, but at least it would be seen.
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Just out of curiosity, how do people feel about software from Russian individuals, like AIMP? I'm running a pre-invasion version, although I realize the guy making it may be on the up and up. Am I too paranoid?
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this is why i took my programmer son’s advice and don’t use it. so far, it’s gone fine, but im pretty careful. obviously if i were a business, id have to use various type of protections, including AV. i’d have to hire someone far more knowledgeable than me to analyze the contenders and give me an in-depth overview so i could choose the most like,y to do its job honestly and well. straight out the gate, AV companies from dictatorships we are at odds with would be ruled out, for reasons of common sense.
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Yeah, I used to back in the early oughts and found it to be a good product. But of course our relationship with Russia was somewhat different back then.
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I don't think there's a firm, good/bad line.
Kaspersky AV is way at the "no" end of the spectrum, though: inherently requires administrative and deep access to your system, is of questionable value without updates, and probably has considerable foreign income which could/might be turned to supporting the invasion.
Some random dude that makes $0.99 (or whatever) ea. for a music player? I'd consider the security questionable, but I doubt the income from it would contribute significantly to the invasion.
I've been happy with foobar2k, might give it a whirl if you're looking for alternatives.
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I hear they've been having trouble keeping up with payments required for chatgpt, so maybe we will get lucky.
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I guess untrustworthy AV software is also a greater danger since it's likely the user's only protection so there wont be any AV raising the alarm if their AV is malware.
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Same- and I made the decision to finally walk away from Kaspersky after the beginning of the Ukraine War.
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The K guy is a known friend of Putin, with ties to the old KGB. He's probably one the people who put names on the "to be window'd this month" list.
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It is a sad but inevitable day.
Many years ago I had a machine get rooted that I couldn't easily wipe (it had old applications I still used but lost the disks to). I posted on their forums that I tried using a repair disk from a trial version of their software that didn't work. Kaspersky staff not only responded, but walked me through a laborious process of cleaning the machine.
From that moment, I used their antivirus software which was far better than avast or norton's up until Windows Defender took over.
There were a lot of good people there at one time. I hope most of them managed to escape Russia before being mobilized and/or turned into state hackers.
Many years ago I had a machine get rooted that I couldn't easily wipe (it had old applications I still used but lost the disks to). I posted on their forums that I tried using a repair disk from a trial version of their software that didn't work. Kaspersky staff not only responded, but walked me through a laborious process of cleaning the machine.
From that moment, I used their antivirus software which was far better than avast or norton's up until Windows Defender took over.
There were a lot of good people there at one time. I hope most of them managed to escape Russia before being mobilized and/or turned into state hackers.
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Another interesting point: About ten years ago, I used to use Kaspersky on a variety of PCs. All those PCs are now retired; I haven't used Kaspersky on any machine for at least three years -- I think longer.
Every year since then, I have tried to cancel the subscription. It doesn't work. Nor are their instructions accurate. Every year, they keep billing my credit card.
Whether they're in cahoots with Putin or not, they're evil.
Every year since then, I have tried to cancel the subscription. It doesn't work. Nor are their instructions accurate. Every year, they keep billing my credit card.
Whether they're in cahoots with Putin or not, they're evil.
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I hope you’re disputing the charges with your credit card issuer.
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It shouldn't be because of their ethnic background, but whether they or their upstream supply chain need to obey the Russian government. Do they live inside Russia? Are their servers located in Russia? If any of these answers are yes, then the Russian government has influence. Putin wouldn't have influence over Jack Black, Lenny Kravitz, Bernie Sanders, etc. just because of their ancestry.
The article should have provided more analysis on Russian laws that allow government intervention within Russian businesses, even if it means interviewing outside experts.
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Yeah, for some reason I thought this had happened a couple years ago.
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Do you really think they operate in a vacuum and just decided one day to ban them without input from the TLAs. The ruling is by the Dept of Commerce because they are the agency designated to have that power.
I don’t know how things work in Russia, but in the US the government agencies can and do coordinate and communicate with each other. I hear they even have email!
Maybe you’re russian and don’t understand how civilized countries work.
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¿Titanium for the SR-71?
In the early 1960s Soviet Union sold titanium to the US believing they needed it for Pizza Ovens but instead they used it to build the iconic SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3+ spy plane - The Aviation Geek Club
In 1960s Soviet Union sold titanium to the US believing they needed it for Pizza Ovens but instead they used it to build the SR-71 Blackbird
theaviationgeekclub.com
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In 2017 it was banned from government networks, but not for consumers.
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If you're running Windows 10 or 11, Microsoft Defender works just fine. You're already trusting Microsoft with deep access to your system when running Windows, since they could do pretty much anything they wanted with a security update and are getting data from you with all their telemetry. (You can disable some of that with third-party tools, but not all.) Installing security updates for Defender doesn't change your risk profile any at that point and it does a good job.
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