back to article It's 'nyet' again, yet again, for Kaspersky: Appeal against US govt ban snubbed by Washington DC court

Kaspersky Lab won't be getting its day in court after all, as the Washington DC Court of Appeals rejected its case against Uncle Sam. On Friday, the appeals court panel upheld an earlier district court ruling that Kaspersky could not bring a lawsuit against the US government in hopes of overturning the 2017 order that blocked …

  1. Crazy Operations Guy

    I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

    With how consistently wrong the US Government is when it comes to network security, there couldn't be any better endorsement for Kaspersky products as getting banned by the Feds.

    Hell, its exactly why they are now in possession of $70 of my dollars... (I also use a second anti-malware product on my proxy to scan incoming files. Its been banned in Russia, but not the US. I figure between the two, I'd be safe from both sides. But also figure it'd be interesting to see all the cases where one catches something and the other doesn't, and vice versa...)

    1. Sleep deprived
      Thumb Down

      Re: I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

      Well, this year they lost my money after I got fed up with their popups for a third-party proxy and their invasion of every web form with their unsolicited keyboard. But as they don't ask why you leave, they'll probably put the blame on that US campaign.

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

      Boil it down to this:

      a) someone high up in an organization (in this case, the U.S. gummint) says "don't buy from this vendor any more"

      b) vendor finds out about it, and SUES THEM over lost sales.

      yeah really good relationship you have with your customers. NOT.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

        "yeah really good relationship you have with your customers. NOT"

        Supplying the government is subject to different rules from supplying the public, based in principle onm when the government was the biggest buyer and it was important to establish a level playing field for suppliers with strict rules to prevent bribery and corruption.

        It didn't work very well (see revolving doors between armaments and "defence" departments. But the rules exist.

        I imagine it doesn't help Kaspersky that they don't have any ex-generals (US) on the board. Getting US representatives on the board was what ZTE had to do to be forgiven.

    3. Snake Silver badge

      Re: I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

      So, let's get this straight:

      Because the rednecks of the United States voted Cheeto Jesus into office, you now feel that the U.S. government doesn't have a clue and does not act in their own best interests.

      Therefore, possible Russian connections become something to dismiss, playing 'An Enemy of my Enemy is a Friend' campaign.

      ...

      I don't understand the Kapersky issue. I have stayed away from their products for decades, and recommended doing so to others, over this very concern, yet NOW you people worry about it? It's like saying that you trust Google's "Don't be Evil" campaign and blindly accept use of all their services (oh, wait...)

      1. Marty McFly Silver badge
        IT Angle

        Re: I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

        "Because the rednecks of the United States voted Cheeto Jesus "

        Wow, there is someone who blindly believes everything they see on the nightly news!

      2. Crazy Operations Guy

        Re: I wonder how much this is helping their sales...

        "you now feel that the U.S. government doesn't have a clue and does not act in their own best interests."

        No, I am pretty sure they are operating in their best interests, however their interests and the interests of their people very rarely overlap. I've felt this way since DayGlo was still hip and Disco wasn't dead.

        But, my reasoning is mostly due to why the US banned Kaspersky. Some NSA worker took a bunch of classified documents home, including some zero-day code. Said NSA worker then disabled their antivirus so the can run a keygen for Microsoft Office (which, big surprise, infected his machine with all kinds of nasties). He then started his antivirus back up, which noticed the infections from the keygen and also noticed some new code it didn't have a definition for, but it still had all the hallmarks of malware. So, the antivirus then beamed the data back to HQ for further analysis where automated tools can be thrown at it to determine if it is a new piece of malware, new strain of an existing one, or just a false positive. Kaspersky, without knowing exactly what they were dealing with, then produced definition files countering the US's unreleased cyber weapons.

        So really, its that a Russian company did something a competent company does, but the US thought it was part of some grand conspiracy / spy operation (The current administration sure loves going to that well...). Because what other explanation is there to some of their cyber weapons being neutralized well before deployment other than someone trying to sabotage the Glorious Leader?

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    "still the good guys fighting cybercrime all over the world."

    and sending all the data to Putin, because he's the Top Good Guy, right ?

  3. Oh Homer
    Mushroom

    Let me FTFY, judge

    "noting the company's [alleged] close relationship with a Russian government known [claimed] to be actively attacking US networks"

    Not saying they don't (after all, they're perfectly entitled to, since the hypocritical Yanks do exactly the same thing to Russia ... and everywhere else). Just wondering when we're going to see some actual proof instead of empty rhetoric.

    1. BoxedSet
      Holmes

      Re: Let me FTFY, judge

      Hmm, a large bit of pot kettle black going on here all in the name of discrediting competitors.

      "noting the company's close relationship with a Russian government known to be actively attacking US networks and siphoning off top-secret information"

      Vs

      "noting the company's close relationship with a US government known to be actively attacking Global networks and siphoning off top-secret information"

      Tin foil hat time!

  4. trisul

    Kremlin asset

    It seems that courts are unwilling to vouch for the safety of using a Kremlin asset to secure us from Kremlin attacks.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can we now admit this is just about promoting US software and companies? Most of the sanctions are essentially about promoting US trade rather than a concern with security. It was a loophole in the WTO regulations, so they are using it to the greatest extent.

  6. Happytodiscuss

    Kaspersky the AV engine in ZA Extreme Security poses a quandry

    Having used Symantec and McAfee in the past, I settled on the paid edition of ZA. In reading the fine print (again recently) I see that ZA's Extreme Security edition does in fact use the Kaspersky AV system for AV.

    Now I trust CheckPoint to be CheckPoint, and there is no doubt in my mind that some data is being harvested from the Firewall component of the package to bulk up its knowledge of the (un)known universe. I appreciate that I can articulate my inbound and outbound data preferences as I wish to control this flow because I am running layered firewalls.

    I would (did) not buy Kaspersky because as it turned out I had three (former Soviet) Russian engineers working for my Internet company beginning in the early nineties through to 2000, and I trusted them to be Russian. This means take a tea break at 10 and 4, engineer for re-purposability (object oriented discipline), solve complicated problem with simple, effective solutions, and take 'their' source code with them each day. They were brilliant and well educated, and therefore above my paygrade to characterize them as being crooked and/or pro_russia. I recognize that I paid their wages and was entitled to keep the source code of applications they developed on the company's behalf, so I was taking a risk? I didn't buy Kaspersky was my response.

    My company implemented CheckPont firewalls in the nineties.

    However Kaspersky working alongside ZA and operating within their framework? I am still in shock a little bit (having just discovered this recently), perhaps denial, and haven't pulled the plug on ZA yet. Indecision is, the only times I have detected malcode on a machine under my purview, the computer (users) were running Symantec or McAfee and naturally not performing regular updates, practicing unsafe surfing, and using mickey mouse routers. Secondly, ZA paid service is obscure from the mainstream. Third, geopolitically speaking, I believe that there is sufficient mistrust between Israel and Russia and with the source residing within CheckPoint (and Kaspersky's commercial interests in financial survival) to defeat the massive trojan hypothetical that Kaspersky AV residing within CheckPoint's framework poses. Fourth, Russia expelled and exported a significant number of clever, motivated (Soviet educated) engineers to Israel in the early 90's sufficient to start an extremely successful software industry which included sufficient technical talent to control any bad actor.

    I am going to keep my ZA for now.

    Opinions on my approach?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kaspersky is - was - innocent

    Kaspersky is an innocent party in a vicious smear campaign, you only have to read about LoJack for laptops or Comutrace backdoor, that had been illegally inserted into large corporate networks through a BIOS hack to avail the genuine guilty party.

    They just dont like the antivirus vendor or it's hackers because they publicly disclosed there illegal behaviour inserting illegal access into people's devices, this is also after the US lost 10 Billion in funding and went to War during 9/11 several politicians and the guilty parties involved will in reality spend the remainder of there lives in prison when the truth comes out and the truth is coming.

    Real estate developers and tax avoidance is what it's all really been about, the GCHQ have taken the government straight back into Watergate and the Socialist Communist block is loving every single minute of there illegal activities and there stupidity.

  8. JohnG

    In Snowden's leaks of NSA naughty stuff, I seem to remember that Kaspersky products were listed amongst those for which the NSA had a back door.

  9. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Ban the code!

    We don't want code from a company based in Russia written by the lowest bid developers in India. We want code from a company based in the US written by the lowest bid developers in India!

    1. Random Handle

      Re: Ban the code!

      >We don't want code from a company based in Russia written by the lowest bid developers in India.

      It's actually a UK based company - they moved everything into a holding company registered here over 20 years ago.

  10. Jay Lenovo
    Holmes

    It's not the software, it's the owners.

    Code can be farmed from anywhere by any company.

    The bottom line is that governments prefer access to the people responsible, when or if something were to be found that violated their laws.

    Russia rarely (more like never) extradites people for such crimes. This level of tolerable abuse makes trust, closer to the blind or visually impaired variety.

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