The allegations that Kaspersky support phone number Lab spied on its customers on
behalf of Russian intelligence services, as was reported in top American
newspapers this past week, are very serious and threaten the future of the
antivirus Kaspersky helpline phone number maker — even if no conclusive proof has been offered and no one
making the accusations has been willing to speak up in public.
Credit: Jaggat Rashidi/ShutterstockHere at Tom's Guide, we still recommend Kaspersky
antivirus customer service number software for home users who don't work in any
industries involved with national security. But we sent questions to several
information-security experts, ranging from a former NSA staffer to a lawyer for
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for their opinions on whether they
considered Kaspersky phone number software safe to use.
"My firm is recommending
that our customers, who largely are financial companies, uninstall Kaspersky
AV." by Kaspersky support phone number
— Dave Aitel, Immunity Inc.
Most of our respondents agreed that people who work in government
or critical-infrastructure industries should not use Kaspersky customer service number software. One
said he was telling everyone to remove it.
"My firm is recommending [that] our customers, who largely
are financial companies, uninstall Kaspersky AV," said Dave Aitel, a former NSA staffer and the founder,
owner, and chief technology officer of Immunity Inc., an information-security
consultancy. "There is no plausible innocent explanation for the
information that has been presented."Kaspersky support phone number
Other security experts we spoke to weren't ready to condemn the
company without seeing the evidence. But they added that we've got just as much
to fear from Chinese vendors — and that most modern antivirus software, not
just Kaspersky customer service number would be abused to become an espionage tool Kaspersky phone number.
"I haven't seen anything which makes me think that it's any more dangerous to run Kaspersky than any other major antivirus product."Kaspersky support number
— Graham Cluley, independent
security consultant
MORE: Best Antivirus Software
"I haven't seen anything which makes me think that it's any
more dangerous to run Kaspersky than any other major antivirus Kaspersky support number
product," Graham Cluley, an
independent security blogger and a former staffer at the antivirus maker Sophos,
told us. "Kaspersky might be being singled out … because the company is
Russian, and that doesn't sit too well in the current geopolitical
climate."
John E. Pike, founder, and director of
GlobalSecurity.org, a national security think tank, said Kaspersky antivirus the software was "probably" safe to use, but he added that "such
products have too much spaghetti code for anyone to have confidence that they
understand all that is going on under the hood."
Strong,but unproven, accusations by Kaspersky helpline phone number
On Oct. 5, The Wall Street Journal,
citing unnamed current and former government officials, reported that in 2015,
Kaspersky antivirus Kaspersky support phone number software running on the home computer of an unnamed NSA
staffer spotted NSA files that the staffer had brought home and put on his or
her machine. (The staffer broke the rules by taking the files home, but he or
she is not suspected of espionage.)
The Kaspersky antivirus software somehow alerted Russian
intelligence to the presence of the NSA files and Russian spies then targeted
the NSA staffer's computer and copied files from the machine, according to the
WSJ It's not clear exactly how Russian intelligence got access to Kaspersky support number data, or exactly what kind of NSA files the staffer had on his machine.
(NSA-made malware would have been noticed by many antivirus products.)
"Whichever antivirus the product you use, you should configure it to NOT send data back to the vendor."Kaspersky customer service phone number
— Rob Graham, CTO, Errata
Security
Late Tuesday (Oct. 10), The New York Times,
also quoting anonymous sources, reported that Israeli spies who had hacked into Kaspersky customer service phone number internal networks in 2014 were the first to see evidence that
Kaspersky software had been used to spy on the NSA staffer. The Israelis
apparently turned what they had found over to the NSA Kaspersky phone number.
The Washington Post backed
that allegation with its own story, and in 2015, Kaspersky Lab itself had disclosed the Israeli hack of
its own networks.
On Oct. 11, The Wall Street Journal came
back with a second story, in which more (or perhaps the same) unnamed
government officials told the paper that Kaspersky customer service phone number malware database, which
looks for certain snippets of code in an attempt to catch malware, had been
updated at a certain point to look for text strings that indicated the U.S.
intelligence documents. Such a text string might be "TOP SECRET," or
the code name of a known NSA or CIA operation or program.
You could try turning off antivirus data collection
Rob Graham, head of
information-security consultancy Errata Security and creator of several
security tools had a suggestion for all antivirus users who might be worried
about the software spying on them Kaspersky support phone number.
"For ordinary consumers, it's probably as safe using
Kaspersky as any other antivirus software," Graham told us.
"Whichever product you use, however, you should Kaspersky customer service number configured it to NOT send
data back to the vendor."
Graham was referring to the telemetry, a feature of most antivirus
programs that send data about the customer's machine to the antivirus
company's servers for analysis, which, in turn, leads to quick responses to new
malware.
Kaspersky's telemetry functions reportedly tipped off the Russian spies to
the presence of NSA software on the NSA staffer's home computer. Most antivirus
software, including Kaspersky helpline phone number, lets you toggle off telemetry so that your
machine, at least in theory, receives data from the antivirus company without
sending any back.
Because of telemetry, antivirus products "have access to
everything on the system and communicate constantly," states a blog post co-authored
by Roel Schouwenberg, a former Kaspersky support phone number Lab malware a researcher who is now at Celsus Advisory Group, an information-security
consulting firm. "They are effectively 'trusted implants.'"
Kurt Opsahl, deputy executive
director and general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
digital-liberties advocacy group agreed that telemetry is a risk, and not only
to Kaspersky customers.
"Cloud-based AV … necessarily allows the AV software to see
and report on what's on your machine — and gives an opening to intelligence
agencies to get that information," he told us. "Kaspersky support number shows that
this can actually happen, though something similar may well have happened
elsewhere Kaspersky phone number."
Happy
to work with the authorities – of all nations
Within the global information-security community, Kaspersky Lab is
highly respected for the quality of its research, as well as for its
willingness to share its findings, work with other antivirus companies and
collaborate with police agencies against cybercrime.
We at Tom's Guide, as well as rival publications, have
consistently rated Kaspersky antivirus software well for its excellent malware
detection (as borne out in regular lab tests), its low system-performance
impact and its useful extra features.
As a young man, Eugene Kaspersky customer service number was educated at a KGB-run
technical academy then served in Soviet military intelligence.
Kaspersky Lab and McAfee, along with Europol and the Dutch
national police, created and run the NoMoreRansom.org website to help victims
of encrypting ransomware protect and recover their data. Just yesterday (Oct.
12), Interpol announced that it was expanding its relationship with Kaspersky customer service phone number Lab to share threat intelligence.
"Kaspersky Lab is an excellent company with a solid
reputation for building good security products," Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International
Computer Science Institute, Kaspersky helpline phone number an affiliate of the University of California,
Berkeley wrote on the Lawfare blog in
July. "But that is only true for most users. ... Kaspersky software should
be banned from all governmental computers, defense contractors, and related
assets Kaspersky support number."
"Companies may well be
targets of economic spying, while non-profits and activists may be targets of
spying on political opposition, and should give a higher weight to the spying
risk," Opsahl said. Kaspersky phone number "Given what's known, is it worthwhile to stick
with [the] software with this news? Probably less so than with consumers."
For More Info: Contact Kaspersky Support
Comments
Post a Comment