Kremlin Says US Decision To Ban Kaspersky Designed To Stifle Competition (reuters.com) 68
The Kremlin said on Friday that a U.S. decision to ban sales of Kaspersky's software was a typical move by Washington to stifle foreign competition with American products. From a report: The Biden administration on Thursday said it would ban the sale of antivirus software made by Russia's Kaspersky Lab in the United States, citing what it said was the Kremlin's influence over the company which poses a significant security risk. [...] Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kaspersky was a "very competitive" company on international markets and that Washington's decision to restrict its sales was a "favourite technique of unfair competition from the United States."
what is the Kremlins cut % of the sales? (Score:1)
what is the Kremlins cut % of the sales?
Re: what is the Kremlins cut % of the sales? (Score:2)
VAT in Russia is 20%, apparently.
Re: (Score:1)
Backdoor for FSB and others to all PCs with Kaspersky installed
Nyet, Comrade... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or staying in business.
Comrade, nice business you got there, shame if some put a pen in your hand and made you appoint some stooge to position of CFO. I love the view from your 20th floor office. Look at all those windows.
Re:Nyet, Comrade... (Score:5, Interesting)
For all the would-be legitimate enterprises that tried to grow in Russia around the turn of the century, their country failed them, and it's really too bad. And for what? Nobody wants to invade them.
Re: (Score:1)
China would not mind biting off a chunk of Siberia, and there's not a damn thing Vlad the Impaler could do to stop them short of starting a nuclear war....and China's been beefing up its nukes.
Re: (Score:2)
of course they would only do so under extreme duress & not at all out of a sense of duty or patriotism, amirite?
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it's duress. Putin hasn't gotten around to looking at page 2 of the Dictator's Handbook.
Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Free Market? Russia??
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly! Russia can eat shit.
Dear Kremlin (Score:1, Troll)
...STFU!
Honest question here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honest question: Who cares what the Kremlin says about anything we do? As Putin's sockpuppet, the Kremlin is GOING to have something negative to say about everything the US does. Always. Unless it involves doing something so stupid that even our own populace is left scratching their heads wondering if someone in charge is attempting a public rectal cranial inversion. In which case, the Kremlin will be all for it.
So, really, do we need to advertise the Kremlin's propaganda? I dunno. Seems a dumb idea to me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I care what the Kremlin thinks. When they don't like something, I tend to think it's a good idea. When they do like something, I tend to think it's a bad idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep when the Kremlin whines about something I assume we're right on the money,
If this was just about crushing some russian business that has no strategic value I doubt they'd bother to make a statement.
My condolences to the folks at Kaspersky, it seemed like an ok product compared to others in that space.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
film it and ensure everyone in Russia gets a copy.
AI says "Hold my beer."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Honest question here. (Score:2)
Russia invading neighbors says it all (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia invades its neighbors to stifle competition, and then complains about sanctions?
Re: Russia invading neighbors says it all (Score:2)
You think "stifle competition" was the reason for a Russia invasion? Which country?
I'm sure there are lots of reasons, but not that one.
Re: (Score:1)
The "official" reason for Russia invading Ukraine was because Ukraine was supposedly having a nazi problem. The country with the nazi problem who elected a jewish president.
Re: (Score:3)
In Russia, everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi. Russia hates Nazis not because of the anti-semitism, or even the war, but because Nazis dared to also attack Russia. Winning the war is an integral part of the psyche of many Russians, it's probably the only good thing to happen in recent history to be proud of or to feel patriotic about. Just as you see some Americans with over-inflated patriotism shouting at Europeans: "you'd all be speaking German if it wasn't for us!", that same mentality exists a
Re: (Score:2)
Great power influence competition, not economic competition. Russia is, or was, the world's gas station; it's largely on the sidelines of every form of economic activity other than arms sales, and the more involved it gets in Ukraine, the lower its share of world arms sales goes. France is poised to overtake them in second position, if they haven't already.
Of course by either metric -- great power influence competitiveness or economic competitives in the arms field -- the Ukrainian adventure has been a cat
Re: (Score:2)
You think "stifle competition" was the reason for a Russia invasion?...
A Russian-speaking population that moves on from the Soviet- economic/political system to develop into a European country similar to Poland, or the Czech Republic... Putin cannot allow that kind of competition, as it's a threat to his "vertical of power" in Russia.
Re: Russia invading neighbors says it all (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget Covid, and Putin being a germophobe. No one had touched him in a few years. Not even the aide-de-camp in charge of hard-ons.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Russia invading neighbors says it all (Score:2)
Seriously though, from the rethoric in Putin's speeches, Nato getting close is just a small part of the reason. He just wants to make Russia great again. I wonder what he is projecting here.
Re: (Score:2)
In November 2013, a wave of large-scale protests known as "Euromaidan" began in response to President Yanukovych's decision not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), instead choosing closer ties to Russia. [wikipedia.org]
Russia did not want Ukraine to strangthen ties with the EU, they wanted to have Ukraine in a trade union agreement with Russia and Belarus and their other allies. When Yanukovych fled and it was clear the new government was going to support the EU decision
Re: (Score:2)
Russia did not want Ukraine to strangthen ties with the EU, they wanted to have Ukraine in a trade union agreement with Russia and Belarus and their other allies. When Yanukovych fled and it was clear the new government was going to support the EU decision is what kicked off the first wave of military hostilities with Ukraine.
Just some minor clarification. The invasion of Crimea started on Feb 20th. Yanukovych fled on the 22nd two days later.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you, exact dates on these types of historical events are important, especially here where the the amount of major political actions that happened in just that Feb 18-23 timespan is pretty wild.
Re: (Score:2)
By that date the directions of the winds were well known.
Re: (Score:1)
You mean Putin did not want Ukraine to strengthen ties with the EU because a prosperous Ukraine would make him look like the two-bit kleptocrat that he is. His long term goal since well before Ukraine was to put the Soviet Union back together again, thus immortalizing the size of his penis for generations to come.
He found the West would do nothing when Russia stole a bit of Georgia. So he upped the ante and found the West would do nothing over his stealing Crimea and gave the West the fig leaf that it used
Re: (Score:2)
You think "stifle competition" was the reason for a Russia invasion? Which country?
I'm sure there are lots of reasons, but not that one.
Name one legitimate reason for Russia to invade Ukraine. Just one. Before you answer, remember, Ukraine is a sovereign country which did not attack Russia, nor did anything against Russia such as confiscating any of its land, taking its industry, or preventing its ports from operating.
Re: (Score:1)
I remember when Dear Vladdy swore that Russia was only in Crimea to keep the peace & that the Little Green Men aka the Polite People were 100% concerned locals & absolutely positively NOT Russia army regulars in disguise
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, everybody knew they were Russian. It was widely reported that they most certainly were Russian. Then Putin announced, "hah hah, I fooled you all, they were Russian soldiers all along!", and the world collectively slapped their foreheads.
Re: (Score:2)
It's obvious, Russia invaded Ukraine to free it's from its Jewish Nazi President, and Russia did it using a private military company named after Hitler's favourite composer [wikipedia.org] and led by a guy covered with Nazi tattoos [romea.cz].
And of course to stop them from joining NATO which they couldn't do since Russia started occupying their territory in 2014.
Re: Russia invading neighbors says it all (Score:1)
AV is a backdoor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just use firewalls to counteract the problem: https://sizeof.cat/notes/17168... [sizeof.cat]
operation triangulation payback? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: operation triangulation payback? (Score:1)
Interesting. It reminds me of why they banned Huawei network equipment - they were preventing US spying attempts. It was OK for a while, because huawei equipment was easily hacked, but the British worked with them to make them more secure. Then the British bent over and let the USA have their way with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Did Kaspersky find this independently or did one of the Russian security agencies give them the information because the Russian government wanted some propaganda points?
Re: (Score:2)
Does it matter?
Re: operation triangulation payback? (Score:2)
This is the point: they canâ(TM)t be trusted. They should be treated as under control of the Russian government, especially with the trusted position and back door access they have to peopleâ(TM)s computers. This has been clear to me for years.
Re: (Score:2)
You're concluding they can't be trusted because they revealed an NSA exploit?
Re: (Score:2)
You guys are obviously going to exploit this decision for all you can milk out of it, but antivirus software runs kernel-level code and any company within reach of Putin cannot be trusted not to abuse that level of access. No justification beyond this obvious risk is necessary. Putin has decided that he likes Kim's style better, so isolation it is.
Untrustworthy software; trustworthy analysis? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like most, I stopped using foreign-flagged low-level things like AV software quite a while ago... but I've certainly been impressed over the years by some of their postmortems and analysis on malware and worms out there, especially lower level ones. While the company may not be trusted, I'd hope that the (obviously intelligent) security researchers can be yoinked out of there to work for Western companies, or in their own consulting, in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone please mod parent up. Unfortunately, I used up my moderator points yesterday. This is insightful, it captures my feelings towards Kapersky.
Re: (Score:3)
Trusting an open analysis is one thing. Trusting a binary blob that transmits information is something else.
My first reaction was "If the Kremlin opposes the move, then banning Kapersky was probably the right move." This is overly simplistic, but I'm not interested enough to dig deeper.
Need to stop reporting Kremlin remarks as news. (Score:5, Insightful)
In those cases, report behavior alone. If they want to waste their own resources promoting their own zero-credibility propaganda, let them. Western media don't have to donate their services as a town cryer for a dictator.
Kaperski is Evil (Score:3)
THIS JUST IN TO OUR NEWSROOM: (Score:1)
So what? (Score:1)
Normally I'd care if it was a protectionist move to "stifle competition" but Russia is a sanctioned country for being led by a petro-dictator cunt of a war criminal. They should expect things like this until they stop with the illegal invasion of sovereign countries and war-criming.
It's good to know that we've hit them where it hurts though. Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered saying anything at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then they can feel free to ban US tech companies that are closely related to US government intelligence activities in their countries. I know you were going for hypocrite, but you landed somewhere else.
Oh, and you misspelled Cambodia and Libya.
No nuclear threat? (Score:2, Funny)
I'm shocked that Putin or one of his yapping dogs hasn't threatened a nuclear response to this embargo. They must be slipping.
Re: (Score:1)
He's still all warm & fuzzy from his trip to the great nation of North Korea
It WILL! (Score:2)