> Looking back into the recent weeks, we observed over 14 million unique IP addresses communicating with Kaspersky update servers, making a total of over 100 million connections.
Could be using something like Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which claims to use a map of the entire internet.
From their marketing:
"Understand your adversaries and their online infrastructures to identify your potential cyberthreat exposures using a complete map of the internet."
This is kind of an aside, but the huge AI-generated image at the top immediately stops me in my tracks, and kills any desire to read the rest of the article. Is the text AI too? Is this just AI slop to spam up Google? It's so offputting.
It's a really offensive website. Cookie thing takes up half the screen on mobile and Manage button just opens a blank white dialog, dings and buttons coming up with alerts 20 seconds after loading the page...
Leaving aside the valuable politics concern, I honestly love Kaspersky, it's the only AV that doesn't suck or become too spammy. Which alternative would you recommend? Please don't say Norton
ESET has my recommendations for the same reason. Really good and way more light weight than many other solutions. Though I'd say anything more than Windows Defender for home users really isn't needed.
Is this retaliation for that time they detected unreleased NSA spyware? Has there ever been shown to be a security breach related, or is this just Russia bad? genuinely curious.
Antivirus software typically requires some level of privileged access. Given Kaspersky's deep collaboration with the Kremlin it's a serious attack vector.
Correct. The US government is not going to compel Alphabet to use Chrome as an attack vector against the US. Therefore the US is not concerned about Chrome.
This isn't a technology issue, it's a governance issue.
The US government, DoD, CIA, etc are all "bad" too. I'm not excusing Russia's actions, but if you're going the moral high ground, on civilian murder, you should be avoid US companies as well.
It’s not about morals. Russia and China are waging a hybrid war with the US/EU at the moment.
Any US or European company absolutely should not trust a Russian or Chinese company at the moment. Especially not for antivirus.
Just like any company based in Russia or China shouldn’t trust western companies.
But also you are comparing autocracies to democracies. Don’t pretend that the control the US is able to exert over their companies is in anyway comparable to what is common place in Russia/China. Remember the rash of murder/suicides of Russian oligarchs where they decided to kill their families and then off themselves. Or how about when Jack Ma was disappeared for a year.
Russia/China is in no way equivalent to western democracies on this issue. So please stop the whataboutism.
> Russia and China are waging a hybrid war with the US/EU at the moment.
Russia is at war with Ukraine. The EU is at war with nobody. Who's at war with the US?
You seem to be using the world "war" very lightly in a context where actual war is also happening.
And that's the aspect that's hitting me the most: people get into a "we're at war" mindset without needing their government to actually make official steps nor actually engage their responsibility. Banning TikTok is ok because of that "war but not really" atmosphere, where China is not an actual diplomatic enemy with open proof and potential discussions of them, but companies can still be punished purely on the grounds of involvement with China.
We are not in a direct conflict with Russia. But Russia has invaded a neighbor in order to steal the land, people and property. And is currently bombing children hospitals in the process of achieving its goals.
We are at war with the idea that in this day and age, this is normal and OK.
Since WW-II, the world has lived in "relative" safety. No national boundaries have been changed by force. Russia is not on-board with this plan and wants to go back to the old way of expanding borders.
The US/EU is definitely in a proxy fight with Russia in Ukraine. Russia is definitely running disinformation campaigns and funneling money across the US and EU to try and tilt elections to their far right allies. There have been several high profile breaches of US institutions recently traced back to Russia and Chinese hacker groups.
So that covers actual fighting, political attacks, and cyber attacks. This is literally the definition of hybrid warfare. Here is the Wikipedia page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_warfare
Nations throwing espionage and disinformation campaigns at each other happens all year long, the only nations not doing it are the ones who can't afford it.
The US also spies and runs disinformation campaigns in EU countries. Are we at hybrid war with the US ? Is the US at hybrid war with Japan since the actual war ended ? Or is the point to always be at hybrid war with somewhere ?
"the control the US is able to exert over their companies"
You have that relationship inverted. The US gov't is a mere shell at this point, having outsourced all its core functions to private companies. There is no "medicare" budget or "defense" budget, there is only the capital allocated to and embezzled by the medical & military industrial complex.
And rest assured they do their own set of overt disappearances, notably the Boeing whistleblower and Epstein. There is an obvious playbook they follow in such cases, first they bribe, blackmail, or discredit - before being indiscreet.
I don't want to get into a whole thing, but just its maybe a bad moment to try to make the points your making!
The amount of "control over companies" one state has over another is not going to be a strong debate point when your good guys here are, as we speak, sustaining an extreme act of at this point inarguable mass murder. All while, it should probably go without saying, sustaining a complete harmony in the respective state and private institutions at play. What a lovely coincidence I guess!
This is not even get into maybe the not so fine details of USA democracy these days.
I know you really felt like you had a point and some ground to stand at one time, but you gotta remain vigilant. History can move fast, and it does not reward loyalists.
(1) Public discussion in the web about what is, has and will happen in global / security / foreign politics is completely broken.
(2) The reason is not and cannot be one-sided. However it may be better to think of groups with "mind control" powers and entities with not than any nation states or international organizations.
(3) I have never seen an attempt by anyone to do something about this; it seems that hope of rational (web) discussions and analysis is, has always been, and will for foreseeable future buried by whatever this is.
The war is between the US (allies) and Russia. Ukraine is just a proxy country. Did the war start with the invasion of Ukraine or many years before when NATO decided it needed to expand?
Countries scared of Russian aggression have been clamoring to join. Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine twice. They managed to get Sweden and Finland to join up thereby expanding their border with NATO by 1340km.
Truth is Russia could have decided to be Norway if they would have just peacefully stayed in their borders and sold gas/oil to the EU. But instead they decided they would rather be North Korea.
In a decade they will likely be just another client state of China. It is truly sad.
The EU which represents majority of NATO countries (with the US and Canada excluded) did. The efforts to get Ukraine to join the EU and then the CIA toppling of Viktor Yanukovych over his refusal.
Then we get the Cremeia response from Russia and this starts the ball rolling.
The CIA did not topple Yanukovych. Yanukovych got over 100 protesters killed and ran away from Ukraine when he understood that he was not going to get away with it and would be facing jailtime. Ukrainian parliament assembled to resolve the crisis and voted 328-vs-0 for holding new elections, which took place a few months later. Not even a single person from Yanukovych's own party voted in support of him.
It most certainly started years ago when Russia invaded and annexed parts of Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine was lukewarm at best to the idea of NATO before that (and in fact, substantial parts of it were very pro-Russia, a sentiment which quickly changed when they saw what happened to the people in the areas of Ukraine under Russian control).
The toppling of Viktor Yanukovych after refusing to join the EU in a US sponsored revolution is what caused annexing Crimea. Crimea represents access to the black sea a very strategic location that is 90% Russian.
The black sea a very strategic location that is 90% Russian.
Between 55-80 percent of the people in these regions identify as Ukrainian, according to the most recent census.
They may also speak Russian (to some degree), but that doesn't mean they consider themselves to be ethnically "Russian", or are desperate to be reunited with the Motherland.
It just means that Ukraine is a bilingual country.
You may want to take a serious look at what sources you are pulling such obviously misleading figures from.
And in particular: at who is presenting these misleading narratives to you, and why.
You say this like the latter is a perfectly reasonable reaction to the former (which is already a gross misrepresentation of events), when in fact it is completely unreasonable.
What's wrong with NATO expanding? It's a voluntary organization that protects member states from aggressors? It's like saying a shelter for abused women is also somehow partially responsible for domestic abuse... One side is protecting the other is attacking. South ossetia, crimea, abkhazia are all examples of what happens if you live too close to russia and aren't protected by nato lol
What's wrong with trying to circle in Russia decreasing their military and economic control? That's viewed as hostile and we see what the response is. The strategic of circling of China is getting pushback. The idea of containment is hostile and creates pressure which is relied by wars but this kills innocent people.
Ukraine begged to join NATO because they saw this coming a mile off.
They’re still begging.
Asking to join the neighbourhood security watch is offensive only to burglars.
PS: If your argument over NATO membership is a valid one, then why is Russia not equally upset about Sweden and Finland joining NATO? Why not invade those sovereign nations on their border as well to prevent their membership? Is it because they don't particularly care about NATO unless it gets in the way of a planned invasion? Could that be it?
They are upset more with Finland because of proximity. But Belarus is the buffer country in that region. If it looked like they were going to join NATO they would invade. Ukraine is a buffer country.
Finland has a 1,340km border with Russia, and the closest part of Belarus to Finland is 462km away.
So again, why did Russia not invade Finland to stop Finnish membership in NATO?
Russia claims this is their casus belli for their invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and tankies accept this at face value.
They also claim that Ukraine deserved to be invaded because they were mis-treating ethnic Russians. Okay, but Ukraine's treatment of ethnic Hungarians near the Hungarian border was virtually identical. So... does Hungary have casus belli to invade Ukraine?
Or if Putin takes all of Ukraine as per his stated goal of "returning" Ukrainian land to Russia "where it belongs", does he also plan on returning the currently Ukranian land back to Hungary that it lost? If not, why not?
What if Panama invited China to establish a giant military base on its territory, given that they were unlawfully invaded and occupied by the US just a few decades ago and presumably have an interest in preventing it from happening again? Do you think the US govt would be cool with that? Why not? Doesn't Panama have a right to choose their own allies, and also discourage a future invasion from the US? Why would the US object to this at all unless they were planning a future unlawful invasion?
I'll close with a quote from former CIA director Bill Burns, who tried to talk the Bush administration out of pushing for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia (this is from 2008):
"Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. At this stage, a MAP [Membership Action Plan] offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze…. It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine."
Let's see... the US is preparing for the invasion next -- checks notes -- oh never. They're not planning to invade at all. Huh. Interesting. Interesting...
Similarly, China has been "courting" Pacific islands that were previously in the "sphere of influence" of Australia. It's been in the news a lot recently over here.
Instead of immediately ramping up military recruitment for an imminent invasion, our government instead sheepishly admitted that it's a bit shameful how we haven't been paying much attention and should be nicer to our neighbours so that they'll ally with us instead.
China already has bases much closer than Panama, in another country Russian apologists like to bring up as an example, Cuba. It's such a non-issue that you're not even aware of it.
Burns has changed his mind since 2008 and now advocates for greater military support for Ukraine.
They're (alleged) intelligence facilities, not military bases.
The fact that Burns is hawkish on Ukraine after Putin invaded does not imply that he's changed his mind about what could/should have been done to prevent it.
> They're (alleged) intelligence facilities, not military bases.
Ukraine didn't have even that. Prior to the Russia invasion of Ukraine, there were no permanently stationed foreign troops at all east of where they had stood in Europe during the Cold War. Most Cold War era military installations in Western Europe were shut down in the 1990s and no new ones were built anywhere. It's a completely made up grievance.
> The fact that Burns is hawkish on Ukraine after Putin invaded does not imply that he's changed his mind about what could/should have been done to prevent it.
He has completely abandoned the line of thought from 2008 that centers on tiptoeing around Russia. NATO acted as he advised and didn't offer membership to Ukraine, yet this didn't prevent the war. He now accuses Russians of lying about their intentions, warns of ambitions beyond Ukraine, and says that he underestimated Putin's fixation on Ukraine. Nowhere have I seen any mention of NATO or Ukraine being at fault as suggested by those who bring up that old quote.
At this stage, a MAP [Membership Action Plan] offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet.
You understand that in fact the MAPs to Ukraine and Georgia were never issued -- and hence, that this "strategic gauntlet" (which according you is what really started the war) was never "thrown" -- right?
What a bullshit quote. Ukraine didn't join NATO and Russia took Crimea anyway. And now they're attempting to take Ukraine.
Russia is only afraid of NATO because they know it will stop them from taking the territory that they want. And it's pretty clear that they're trying to restore the Soviet Union, so they want quite a bit of territory.
Forget the ongoing military conflict, and Russia is a hostile US IC rival. We did much the same thing with Huawei, for reasons much more complex than "China bad".
One could say it's similar to the reasons for banning TikTok (concerns about state control of software), but in general, it's an expanding of existing trade sanctions against Russia.
Tik-Tok and an Anti-virus program have pretty different privilege levels I would think. And generally one doesn't install Tik-Tok on servers in the data center, but I guess I could be surprised.
Kaspersky has been in FSB's pocket since forever. Banning hostile foreign intelligence from providing security services to your country is one of the very rare pieces of regulation even a staunch minarchist would support.
The whole world is not hostile to the USA to the same level as USA/Russia, although if they're concerned about espionage yes they may need to. I'm actually a bit surprised the Snowden leaks didn't lead to a bigger push for FOSS in government, but I guess there's a cost/benefit analysis and fully keeping yourself out of reach of the US tech industry is probably too hard to be worth in general.
Not the whole world, just competing powers. And if you've been watching what China and Russia have been doing domestically to prop up their own tech sectors, that's exactly what they are doing.
The initial counterargument from Kaspersky (which seems to address some but not other concerns raised in the above link) apparently was something like the following:
Both the above are from 2017 in the months after the issues about Kaspersky concerns first came to light. This triggered the ban of Kaspersky from US government computers back then. Not sure what info may or may not have come to light since then but most people are not even aware of the above.
I have no first/secondhand knowledge of any of this stuff but this is what my curiosity turned up when I went poking around.
Having observed corporate US security practices, my perception is that a lot of protection involves scanning things using very low-level OS and/or network techniques. Remember that phrase "who guards the guardians? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%... ) The Kaspersky ban by the US Commerce department appears to be essentially a concession that "who scans the scanners?" is not something the US can particularly do for products with the type of low-level access provided to AV/malware products, particularly products from entities with a concrete history of specific adverse (2014-2017) behavior from a particularly skilled hostile country (in this case Russia).
How is Bitsight "observing" here?