Kaspersky, Symantec admit to keeping their users vuln to Gov-made Malware

[humble3d]

Kaspersky, Symantec admit to keeping their users vuln to Gov-made Malware

The Regin malware shows strong indications of being produced by a 1st World Government.

So are anti-virus vendors detecting the malware or helping it's creators victimize infected users?

We have our answer.

said by Mashable :

Symantec's Thakur said that they had been investigating Regin since last year, but only felt "comfortable" publishing details of it now.

Raiu, the researcher from Kaspersky, said they had been tracking Regin for "several years" but rushed to publish the report after a journalist contacted them last week asking for comments about Regin, indicating a competitor was about to come out with their own report.

For Prins, the reason is completely different. "We didn't want to interfere with NSA/GCHQ operations," he told Mashable, explaining that everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to disclose details of Regin first"

Mikko Hypponen, a renowned security expert and chief research officer for F-Secure, said that while they had detected some parts of Regin since 2009, they were not at liberty to discuss their discovery due to confidentiality agreements"

Kaspersky and Symantec made a clear choice to protect their lucrative Gov Contracts, instead of their users. Given their histories, it isn't much of a surprise.

F-Secure I'm less sure about. Mikko Hypponen has been a vocal critic of overreaching government surveillance. However his answer was carefully parsed to not say anything and I'd wager F-Secure is placing Gov interests ahead of anyone else.

bootnote: Emsisoft was the 1st A/V company I know of to clearly state they don't whitelist commercial keyloggers.

I wonder what their position on Gov made malware is.

http://mashable.com/2014/11/25/regin-spy-malware-nsa-gchq/

[flash48]

Another good reason to use other apps such as SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to your computer.

[CODYQX4]

Another good reason to use other apps such as SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to your computer.

Unless of course they also are bought out.

I expected this from Norton, but not Kaspersky. I didn't expect the Russian corp to cover up US malware, though I figured they would Russian (but Russian gov doesn't give a damn about me, or at least I don't think so).

[darko999]

It would be platonic to have all these statment coming from all major AV in the market.

[banned]

Fire up a packet sniffer on your favorite anti-malware product while you scan files, etc. I'm willing to bet most of those products are phoning-home from time to time, collecting information about you. You only need decide how thick should be your tin-foil hat.

[steven36]

Really them harvesting Info have nothing to do with this .. If you come on the internet to do anything your info is recorded . If you dont take measures to give this info a false reading then your trusting the internet with your info everyday with 100s or 1000s of people you dont really know. What this has to do with many people pay good money to buy and anti virus to protect them and instead preventing it by adding it to there databases . They were keeping it hush hush just like NSA did. They knew it existed but decided it was in the public's best interest to not disclose it or do anything about it. And it dont matter witch anti malware you use if there not databases to at lest to prevent it . You are not protected .

[nIGHT]

Another reason to use #2@!*hgtsj

Never mind they already might bought it. :(

[NightWalker]

Fire up a packet sniffer on your favorite anti-malware product while you scan files, etc. I'm willing to bet most of those products are phoning-home from time to time, collecting information about you. You only need decide how thick should be your tin-foil hat.

Sure they are, most security software right now uses Cloud protection.