Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals - Ex-employees

oma · Aug 14, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/14/us-kaspersky-rivals-idUSKCN0QJ1CR20150814

Beginning more than a decade ago, one of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, tried to damage rivals in the marketplace by tricking their antivirus software programs into classifying benign files as malicious, according to two former employees.
They said the secret campaign targeted Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), AVG Technologies NV (AVG.N), Avast Software and other rivals, fooling some of them into deleting or disabling important files on their customers' PCs.
Some of the attacks were ordered by Kaspersky Lab's co-founder, Eugene Kaspersky, in part to retaliate against smaller rivals that he felt were aping his software instead of developing their own technology, they said.
"Eugene considered this stealing," said one of the former employees. Both sources requested anonymity and said they were among a small group of people who knew about the operation.
Kaspersky Lab strongly denied that it had tricked competitors into categorizing clean files as malicious, so-called false positives.
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More to read at above link.

If this is true, who is at fault? Kaspersky or the other (lazy) AV Co's who copied over the false positives?

IMHO both sides are....

Sgt. Tibbs · Aug 14, 2015

Since we have only Kaspersky's word that they were actually stealing his software, and only the word of two former employees who refuse to be named that this even happened...

I don't know. The more I hear about Kaspersky the happier I am I've never used any of their software. The guy is a freakin' lunatic!

crookedbandit · Aug 15, 2015

sounds like Kaspersky threw out some bait to see who would bite !
those that bite got caught !

oma · Aug 17, 2015

crookedbandit said: ↑

sounds like Kaspersky threw out some bait to see who would bite !
those that bite got caught !
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Unfortunately the ones who got bitten were/are the customers of the AV Companies that copy/copied those F/P.

TimW · Aug 17, 2015

http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/kaspersky_denies_rumors.html

sikvik · Aug 17, 2015

Happened with MBAM and IObit. Was great to see MBAM, nail the culprit. Stuff like this will carry on and on and on...

Cheers...

mjnc · Aug 18, 2015

sikvik said: ↑

Happened with MBAM and IObit. Was great to see MBAM, nail the culprit.
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What happened? Can you give us a little more about that?

Eldon · Aug 18, 2015

On 2 November 2009 in a Malwarebytes Forum post, a Malwarebytes employee accused IObit of incorporating the Malwarebytes anti-malware databases into their own anti-malware programs, MalwareFighter and Iobit Security 360.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IObit

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Russian antivirus firm faked malware to harm rivals - Ex-employees

oma MajorGeek

Sgt. Tibbs Ultra Geek

crookedbandit Sergeant

oma MajorGeek

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

sikvik Corporal Karma

mjnc MajorGeek

Eldon Major Geek Extraordinaire