Reply to post: Sigh... it's geographical as well a geopolitical, innit.

Kaspersky dragged into US govt's trashcan as weaponized blockchain agile devops mulled

Palpy

Sigh... it's geographical as well a geopolitical, innit.

Why single out Kaspersky?

Dost thou recall, gentle commentards, the previously-secret hacking tools pulled from the laptop of one Mr. Pho, ostensibly by an automated Kaspersky scan for malware? Did Kaspersky intentionally send the FSB the data?

“'The more likely scenario is that Russian intelligence has some sort of automated monitoring of the traffic that comes back to Kaspersky,' says James Lewis, Cipher Brief expert and a Senior Vice President and Program Director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)."

What about an FSB spy inside Kaspersky?

"...the authoritarian political environment in Russia means that the FSB would not have to go through the subtle process of recruiting insiders within Kaspersky. Rather, what the Kremlin says goes, according to Steve Hall, a former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service."

“'The FSB would have no need to have a spy inside of Kaspersky,' says Hall. 'Bottom line is that it’s almost unimportant how they’re doing it – what’s important is that the FSB can do whatever they want because Eugene Kaspersky and that entire company is based in Russia and nobody wants the FSB knocking on grandma’s or mom’s door and saying, ‘your son isn’t being as cooperative as we want him to be.’”

"[Former British signals intelligence chief Robert] Hannigan agrees. 'It’s simply inconceivable that a Russian company would say ‘no’ to an approach by the FSB: it would be reckless to refuse,' says the former GCHQ chief. 'So, this is not so much about cyber but about authoritarian state control and corruption.'”

All this is quoted from The Cipher Brief, but the quotes seem pretty common-sensical to me. In pragmatic terms, nobody is picking on Kaspersky because they are Russian; they are picking on them because the environs in which they operate are technically, legally, and politically controlled by an authoritarian regime which is inimical to many Western interests.

Eugene K. may be a helluva a good fella running an excellent technical security company. But he doesn't control his country, and his country has extraordinarily coercive leverage over anyone or anything in its domain. And probably has extraordinary abilities to monitor internet traffic -- meaning that every datum sent to Kaspersky as part of its security service is probably monitored by the FSB.

Simples.

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