5 ms·

Hacking Team's 'Illegal' Latin American Empire

79 points by secfirstmd 11y ago

d33 11y ago
What's up with the latest Hacking Team news now? I keep hearing about a 2015 leak and I wonder why I only heard about it now.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  It was a little more than a "leak"... They were pretty much dismantled. http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ
  - sasvari 11y ago
    relevant HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512845
mercurial 11y ago
If only it was only them. It's not like, for instance, Nokia and Siemens happily sold deep packet inspection hardware to Iran.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The funnier part of that story is that it was based on hardware from allot communications which is an Isreali company, it's the same setup that the Dutch government bought. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/israeli-firm-under-fire-selling-spyware-iran https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/israeli-firm-under-fir...
nefitty 11y ago
While we're on the topic of ethics, I recently decided to completely abandon Vice and all of its sister sites (Noisey, Motherboard, Thump, Vice News, etc) because one of its subsidiaries is creating advertising content for Philip Morris. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/17/vice-media-attacked-for-making-tobacco-adverts-for-philip-morris http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/17/vice-media-atta... I emailed Motherboard's editor about this and didn't get so much as a frowny face in response. I am bummed out about Vice Media's blatant hypocrisy. They're worth $4b, so they start tossing kids into the thresher to continue printing money.
- bcook 11y ago
  I only saw that they were tasked with creating general advertisements, not targetted ads for kids, though, I suppose kids are included if a country allows tobacco advertisements in public. Still, the article implies that they are marketing directly towards children... which seems inaccurate.
  - legulere 11y ago
    Tobacco advertisement always is about kids/teenagers, because that's where you get new customers. Getting smokers to switch brands is harder and not really worth it. Here in Germany tobacco advertisements for instance isn't banned yet (planned for 2020). I very often see Marlboro advertisement in public. They show good looking young people living the good life (as in at a concert, not something you can only reach with lots of money). The slogan is: Don't be a maybe, be marlboro paired with some sentence telling you that maybe is bad.
    - nefitty 11y ago
      Thanks for sharing that. When I say "kids" I mean young people. That Vice is using its knowledge and leverage with youth for the tobacco industry is what angers me. My original post is getting downvoted, but maybe your comment will shed some light on what is happening.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      > Getting smokers to switch brands is harder and not really worth it. What I read about this (which dates from the 80s or so) said that elasticity of demand for smoking is very low (no surprise; that's why we call it addictive) and that brand loyalty is also very low. Which means it's easy to get smokers to switch brands; you just need to charge a lower price. In practice, this market structure means that price competition is rather pointless, since all your sales are cannibalized from other cigarette vendors, and if they return the favor you've just lost a bunch of money for no reason. So cigarette companies really like to charge "whatever the other companies charge". This supports the idea that getting smokers to switch brands isn't worth it, but definitely doesn't support the idea that it's hard. (This comes from a Straight Dope question as to why the price of a pack of cigarettes is so uniform across companies.)

79 points by secfirstmd 11y ago

d33 11y ago

What's up with the latest Hacking Team news now? I keep hearing about a 2015 leak and I wonder why I only heard about it now.

fapjacks 11y ago
It was a little more than a "leak"... They were pretty much dismantled. http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ
- sasvari 11y ago
  relevant HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512845

mercurial 11y ago

If only it was only them. It's not like, for instance, Nokia and Siemens happily sold deep packet inspection hardware to Iran.

dogma1138 11y ago
The funnier part of that story is that it was based on hardware from allot communications which is an Isreali company, it's the same setup that the Dutch government bought. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/israeli-firm-under-fire-selling-spyware-iran https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/israeli-firm-under-fir...

nefitty 11y ago

While we're on the topic of ethics, I recently decided to completely abandon Vice and all of its sister sites (Noisey, Motherboard, Thump, Vice News, etc) because one of its subsidiaries is creating advertising content for Philip Morris. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/17/vice-media-attacked-for-making-tobacco-adverts-for-philip-morris http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/17/vice-media-atta... I emailed Motherboard's editor about this and didn't get so much as a frowny face in response. I am bummed out about Vice Media's blatant hypocrisy. They're worth $4b, so they start tossing kids into the thresher to continue printing money.

bcook 11y ago
I only saw that they were tasked with creating general advertisements, not targetted ads for kids, though, I suppose kids are included if a country allows tobacco advertisements in public. Still, the article implies that they are marketing directly towards children... which seems inaccurate.
- legulere 11y ago
  Tobacco advertisement always is about kids/teenagers, because that's where you get new customers. Getting smokers to switch brands is harder and not really worth it. Here in Germany tobacco advertisements for instance isn't banned yet (planned for 2020). I very often see Marlboro advertisement in public. They show good looking young people living the good life (as in at a concert, not something you can only reach with lots of money). The slogan is: Don't be a maybe, be marlboro paired with some sentence telling you that maybe is bad.
  - nefitty 11y ago
    Thanks for sharing that. When I say "kids" I mean young people. That Vice is using its knowledge and leverage with youth for the tobacco industry is what angers me. My original post is getting downvoted, but maybe your comment will shed some light on what is happening.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > Getting smokers to switch brands is harder and not really worth it. What I read about this (which dates from the 80s or so) said that elasticity of demand for smoking is very low (no surprise; that's why we call it addictive) and that brand loyalty is also very low. Which means it's easy to get smokers to switch brands; you just need to charge a lower price. In practice, this market structure means that price competition is rather pointless, since all your sales are cannibalized from other cigarette vendors, and if they return the favor you've just lost a bunch of money for no reason. So cigarette companies really like to charge "whatever the other companies charge". This supports the idea that getting smokers to switch brands isn't worth it, but definitely doesn't support the idea that it's hard. (This comes from a Straight Dope question as to why the price of a pack of cigarettes is so uniform across companies.)