Symantec and Kaspersky blocked from providing software to the Chinese government

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/04/symantec-kaspersky-blocked-chinese-government

~ There's No Need to Post the Entire Article ~

 

Don't worry! Soon it will be applied nation-wide. Trust in China's Great Firewall!

 

How come this thread was moved here from the "News" security topic?

 

I'm surprised about Russia...thought China was singing koom-ba-ya with Putin. ??

 

Tsk tsk tsk, haven't you realized it already? The surveillance scandal is just an excuse. The real purpose is, as per usual, to ban foreign products and propagandize everyone that Chinese products are the better option.

 

After the NSA snooping scandal, particularly on their German "friends", and after reading this:

"Moreover, G DATA does not build backdoors into the software that can be used by government agencies to collect data from the computers of the G DATA customers. As a German company G DATA must adhere to the strict German privacy laws, which do not allow such practices. This guarantees an optimal privacy protection for consumers and businesses. Therefore, trust is an important value for G DATA. Due to the strict German law German security is much more thorough than security from most other regions."
https://www.gdatasoftware.co.uk/pre...es-new-slogan-trust-in-german-sicherheit.html

I guess I do not have many options to choose from, regarding privacy and security

Just a train of thought...

 

Hey!

keep on using that slick, free Chinese software! And free Google stuff too!! Safe and secure LOL!!!

 

Chinese AV companies: We make an all-in-one security solution with so much eye-candy. It will block all viruses for free!
Worldwide market: I've never heard of these AVs before. Are they good?
Independent AV testing labs: We have conducted a test and these products are medicore.
Users who have tried the products: Yeah, I agree with their test result. They're a piece of crap.
Chinese government: Foreign countries are snooping us for our nation's internal secrets. Therefore, we will ban foreign products out of government and corporate computer systems. From now on we will use AV made by our own people.
AV companies from Germany: Our privacy law forbids us to abuse our users' privacy rights. You can trust us faithfully.
Other AV companies: Hey, we also don't collect user identifiable data. What we collect is only basic data to ensure our product is working properly. All of those data are stored in our non-hackable storages.

Two months later...

Chinese government: The usage of foreign AVs has been banned in our country, along with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other foreign evils which may poisoning our youths' minds! We should be proud of AVs made by our own people!
Chinese AV companies: We make an all-in-one security solution with so much eye-candy that is not snooping our users. It will block all viruses for free, without snooping users!
AV companies from other nations: Oi! You can't do that. It's not a fair competition!
US government: Chinese government is guilty for violating rights of healthy competitions! UN must give China international punishments!
Chinese government: Screw y'all! Chinese AVs are the best!
Chinese AV companies: We make an all-in-one security solution with so much eye-candy that is not snooping our users. It will block all viruses for free, without snooping users! China's government trust us! Now it's time to push it to the worldwide market, again!
Worldwide market: I'm still happy with big-named AV I've been using for years. I see no reason to change.
Skeptical users: Good gawd these snake oils are still on? I thought they were abandoned already.

The story usually only revolves around this circle and is very predictable. It really is just as simple as that.

 

Very entertaining, except Qihoo is not doing mediocre in tests, it is doing quite well

 

Bitdefender engine says hi.

 

But you've never made the distinction of completely Chinese products. Plus I don't really see tests on those, can you share some recent ones?

 

The bigger issue is that the definition samples of various AVs are going to be effected. Companies from outside China aren't going to get those in-the-wild attacks as quick (they'd have to wait for the Chinese AVs to share them). Then it goes the other way around too, where the Chinese AVs may not get the newer malware definitions from outside their country.

I think it sounds like they don't want their money spent on products from other countries to run their government based things. Much like Russia moving to arm based cpus for their government ran things https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thr...d-intel-cpus-with-64-bit-arm-hardware.365242/

They only reason they didn't make these types of moves 15+ years ago is probably because everything (internet, Windows/Linux, and anti virus solutions) were still getting figured out. They couldn't afford to be patriotic then.

 

"The move to block use of software made by Symantec, based in the USA, and Kaspersky, based in Russia, came to light following an announcement on the English-language Twitter feed of the state-owned People’s Daily newspaper."

Isn't twitter blocked in China?

 

Do I need to write down a 10 pages of essay just to tell everyone that Chinese AVs are nothing without the help of AV engines from big players?

Just go to AV-TEST or AV-Comparative. Chinese AVs never really shine. Perhaps the only exception is Qihu but that's because they make use of BD's engine.

Hey, it's a Twitter account of state-owned newspaper. And besides, the tweets seem to be directed worldwide. Even if Twitter is blocked by the Great Firewall for Chinese citizens, it's not blocked in most countries. And thus, mission accomplished.

 

Glad someone finally put it out there. The chinese AV and office products are tempting to many...glad my workplace offered free [or almost] alternatives...

 

there is only one word for this drama:

BUSINESS

 

No, you just need to clearly state your story and not rely on presumptions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only there are no Chinese AV without the help of big players in the latest tests.

 

Reminds me, and for no particular reason, of the Simpsons episode "Mountain of Madness" (#165) which ends with Mr. Burns and Homer alternately laughing and glaring at each other.

f

 

You know, I also hate short-sighted, visionless, R&D-deficient vendors relying solely on stuff they buy with a passion, especially a certain German one. But to give credit where's due, Emsi, F-Secure and even Qihoo (at least the IS version) have some interesting in-house tech unlike some others that could be mentioned. Despite the bad rap Chinese get, they do try to improve their methods with R&D and sometimes get it right. That said, banning Western products is hypocritical and provincial of them.

In before Russian hackers take advantage of the weakness of Chinese AVs.

Sure, let's not even consider that the victims might have been "protected" by it at the time. Also, laws and intentions don't mean diddly-doo-dah if the product isn't even good enough for AVC.

 

Nobody cares about Rising or Tencent QQ. Nobody. Qihu managed to get its own stage thanks to BD's engine (and also by disrupting the balance of AV industry. Triple engines? Quintuple engines? Come on that's a silly gimmick).

Yeah, I don't know but Kingsoft and Tencent QQ don't seem to use external engines.

 

Ya well just because the Chinese and ruskies are hacking USA computers doesn't mean a damn thing. If you think for one min someone is not allowing some of it to happen, you need to think again. These are words of wisdom from Budda.

 

I believe Tencent QQ uses Trend Micro, while Kingsoft was bought by Baidu which uses Avira. As for Rising, their not being tested these days. I wonder what the Chinese government thinks about these "traitors".

 

What does that make G-Fail?

 

This has raised a question of what fate will befall Trend Micro? It's a Chinese AV but the HQ is in Japan. I don't want to go off topic, but you guys know how's the relationship between those two. Will the Chinese government include Trend Micro in its circle?

The BD's engine part? Well I have no idea of how good/bad G Data's in-house proactive protection I'm afraid. But I'll have to admit that it was too heavy for my liking. As I said, it's probably the heaviest AV I've ever tried. I didn't encounter any bugs (both fatal and trivial) or BSODs though.

 

It's apparently so bad that they had to pull out of AVC.