Eugene Kaspersky: What Wired Is Not Telling You

Original WIRED article looks like <i>argumentum ad hominem</i> attack on a technology company for its alleged links to Russian government.<p>It is sad that propaganda war between the US and Russia is spreading to 'technology' news media. We are better off discussing technology, not politics.

For anybody else who missed the original article, this seems to be it: <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/</a>

A while ago I thought about what a perfect gateway Antivirus software would make to gain access to millions of machines. In order to stay up to date they are allowed to make regular calls home, are proprietary, and most often for end users even given away for free. Motivated by this post I just went through a list of the Worldwide Antivirus Vendor Market Share[1], looked up their country of origin, and I have to admit that I find the fragmentation of the industry and the internationalization quite remarkable. Of cause I have no datapoints for comparison, but I still find it interesting that so many nations are home to their very own Antivirus software provider.<p>Company Marketshare CountryOfOrigin<p>AVAST SOFTWARE 12.37% Czech Republic<p>AVG TECHNOLOGIES 12.37% Czech Republic<p>AVIRA GMBH 12.29% Germany<p>MICROSOFT CORP. 11.24% United States<p>ESET SOFTWARE 9.98% Slovakia<p>SYMANTEC CORP. 8.77% United States<p>KASPERSKY LABS 7.98% Russia<p>MCAFEE, INC. 4.50% United States<p>PANDA SECURITY 4.18% Spain<p>COMODO GROUP 2.79% United States<p>TREND MICRO, INC. 2.15% Japan<p>PC TOOLS SOFTWARE 2.00% Australia<p>EMSI SOFTWARE GMBH 1.16% Germany<p>SOFTWIN 1.11% Romania<p>F-SECURE CORP. 0.95% Finland<p>OTHERS 6.16%<p>[1] <a href="http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/OPSWAT-Market-Share-Report-June-2011.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.opswat.com/sites/default/files/OPSWAT-Market-Shar...</a>

rebuttal to Eugene's rebuttal: <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/kaspersky-indy/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/kaspersky-indy/</a>

C'mon people. How many "former" KGB agents do you know go completely legit and not have some ties to the Kremlin? Unfortunately, their track record with former spies is pretty well documented.<p>Once an agent, always an agent.

Kaspersky was definitely not the first to document Flame[r]: <a href="http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.crysys.hu/skywiper/skywiper.pdf</a>

I have no doubt that Kaspersky has close ties to the FSB and Kremlin. Just as I have no doubt that U.S. security companies have close ties to the CIA/FBI. Pick your poison.

The tag on the Wired rebuttal to the rebuttal: Crazy Ivans.<p>That's just bad. I really thought Wired were above that. I guess I was wrong.

Both sides are weak. Sounds like a personal thing frankly.

I hate to break it to him, but Indiana Jones is a fictional character and, were he a real person, would have been considered a terrible, terrible archeologist -- on par with 19th century "archeologists" who dynamited ruins and chiseled choice bits off monuments.

For the same reasons that I expect Kaspersky corp to be attached at the hip to the FSB, I expect Oracle and Facebook to be attached at the hip to the CIA.

Did he just use Indiana Jones (a fictional character) as a precedent for himself?