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Israeli Software Helped Saudis Spy on Khashoggi, Lawsuit Says
- Bucephalus355 8y agoFor what it’s worth, the Saudi’s also went to www.sinister.ly and paid $200 bucks a pop for certain spywares.
- brian_herman__ 8y agoHow do you know that?!
- ryanlol 8y agoGoogle "nokia2mon2" that was the username Saud al-Qahtani, an adviser to the Saudi court used on various US-based hacking forums. Here's a wiki article about him on a Las Vegas based hacking forum https://wiki.hackforums.net/index.php?title=Nokia2mon2 https://wiki.hackforums.net/index.php?title=Nokia2mon2 He did not make any efforts to conceal his identity.
- londons_explore 8y agoIf by 'The Saudis', you mean 'someone from Saudi Arabia', then sure. The Americans did it too. As did pretty much every other nation.
- ryanlol 8y agoBy 'The Saudis' he probably meant 'A fixer for the highest levels of Saudi leadership'
- YetAnotherNick 8y agoThey already know what will happen if they will be caught doing this type of things.
- totfz 8y agoThe Saudis and Israel are almost family.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago>>Saudi Arabia paid $55 million last year for its use They are going to ask questions after the Saudis splashing $55m? As if they needed to ask questions. It's known why Russia, China, SA, UAE, Sudan and the likes want these programs
- TheForumTroll 8y agoTo use it the same way the US does?
- chrisco255 8y agoI think it's disturbing what happened to Khashoggi...but I don't understand what the U.S. or the West is supposed to do about it. We can't go to war over some guy who wasn't even our citizen, killed in Turkey, by a foreign government. I hate to say it, but don't things like this happen all the time in certain countries?
- lozaning 8y agoArms embargoes, economic sanctions and travel restrictions I think would all be on the table as responses.
- chrisco255 8y agoFor one guy? What about the people killed in China, Russia, etc? I mean, there's dozens of countries that hit certain political targets with either imprisonment or death. I don't think that's a sustainable diplomatic policy. And when do you lift it?
- kevinh 8y agoYou might want to look into the Magnitsky Act, as that's a similar action taken against Russia. It's context for what countries are doing against murders orchestrated by the Russian government, and what they could do against the government of Saudi Arabia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoYou forgot changing your Facebook profile picture
- Touche 8y agoMurdering dissidents while they are in other countries doesn't happen all of the time, no. That's why it's news.
- chrisco255 8y ago
- abhishekjha 8y agoCan somebody explain how was it possible to get whatsapp messages when it applies E2E encryption? Did they have physical access to the devices? Was it all remote? Is it even feasible on an individual level and what would be the alternative(Signal? Telegram?)?
- goatsi 8y agoNSO has a 0 interaction remote iphone 0day. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvakb3/inside-nso-group-spyware-demo https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvakb3/inside-nso... >The entrepreneur, who spoke to Motherboard on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the meeting, agreed, but said that NSO would have to target his other iPhone, which he brought with him and had a foreign phone number. He gave NSO that phone number and put the phone on the desk. >After “five or seven minutes,” the contents of his phone’s screen appeared on a large display that was set up in the meeting room, all without him even clicking on a malicious link, he said. >“I see clicking on all kinds of icons: email icon, SMS icon, and other icons,” he told Motherboard. “And suddenly I saw all my messages in there and I saw all the email in there and they were capable to open any information that was on my [iPhone].”
- fossuser 8y agoIt's unclear, but from the article it seems to suggest that his phone had bad software running on it and was recording keystrokes at the OS level. Encryption wouldn't help you in this case since you can just record the strokes (maybe see the screen) like the regular user would see. Not sure how they'd do this though, maybe he was using Android?
- TheForumTroll 8y agoIt was an iPhone. They aren't safer than android you know. Just different.
- fossuser 8y agoI think they generally are safer - Apple has a better security posture and tighter control over both the hardware and OS. Though not perfect clearly.
- mikeyouse 8y agoCan you imagine being a software engineer and being okay with getting rich by developing technology to out dissidents and have them murdered by some of the most oppressive governments on earth? Like, that's what you choose to spend your time on.
- cronix 8y agoShould car engineers feel bad because a few people have used the cars they designed improperly and intentionally killed people with them?
- sj3k 8y agoThe context is not the same for the car engineers compared to engineer knowingly working on something with the explicit purpose to harm people
- cronix 8y agoRight, and the context of the software is to catch terrorists and cybercriminals, and it was misused, as all tech can be. "The explicit purpose to harm people" is not an accurate description of the softwares primary purpose.
- mindslight 8y agoThe terms "terrorists" and "cybercriminals" are basically euphemisms for political enemies.
- mikeyouse 8y agoExactly -- and there's no veneer of legitimacy. NSO has been caught red-handed multiple times selling to atrocious governments. Every single person connected to that company is okay helping despots murder political rivals and dissidents. Just awful.
- abalone 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- krn 8y agoNSO Group was co-founded by ex-members of Unit 8200, the Israeli Intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting signals intelligence. The unit relies on selecting 16-18 year-old recruits with the ability for rapid adaptation and speedy learning. Former soldiers of this unit have also created ICQ, Viber, Incapsula, Onavo, and dozens of other IT companies[1]. "How Israel Rules The World Of Cyber Security" is a short documentary by VICE[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca-C3voZwpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca-C3voZwpM
- ryanlol 8y agoIt is always bizarre when people talk of "ex-Unit 8200", it is the largest unit in the IDF. Given that Israel has universal conscription you might just as well call them Israeli and be done with it.
- arijun 8y agoBiggest doesn’t mean big. It’s a few thousand people big, ~1% of the IDF as a whole. And in my limited experience, it does carry clout within the tech scene in Israel. On the other hand, whenever people tout “ex Israeli military” as a positive or negative, I also find it silly. That’s the vast majority of the country!
- dogma1138 8y ago8200 and it’s sub units is double in size as the entire Israeli navy so they are closer to 10% than to 1%. 99XX and 81XX are each more than 1% of the active IDF personnel and they are much smaller than 8200.
- nudgeee 8y agoCitizen Lab [0] has an excellent writeup, it got installed by exploiting a vuln in iOS which jailbroke the device from a fake DHL parcel tracking link (screenshot included). [0] https://citizenlab.ca/2018/10/the-kingdom-came-to-canada-how-saudi-linked-digital-espionage-reached-canadian-soil/ https://citizenlab.ca/2018/10/the-kingdom-came-to-canada-how...
- guelo 8y agoCan't Apple sue them for hacking the iphones?
- abhishekjha 8y agoI think that depends on if there is enough tracable proof and if a case gets registered.
- forapurpose 8y agoAside from the much more important core issues in the article, I found this bit interesting: > Because of those sweepingly invasive capabilities, Israel classifies the spyware as a weapon. The company must obtain approval from the Defense Ministry for its sale to foreign governments. Does the U.S. use such classification for spyware and similar tools? What are the standards which determine whether or not it's a weapon?
- smsm42 8y agoGiven how much of the software development happens in Israel, there is probably some Israeli software in every phone. So describing it as "Israeli software" (as if it's the only software ever made in Israel or Israel is exclusively known for developing spyware) is extremely misleading.
- isoskeles 8y agoNYTimes: It is anti-semitic and scandalous that Facebook hired someone else to point out that George Soros' money helped groups critical of Facebook. Also NYTimes: Israeli Software Helped Saudis...
- tuxxy 8y agoI'm not really sure I see your point. Are you suggesting that this headline is anti-Semitic?
- anad7 8y agoThese days it's anti-Semitic to merely utter the word Israel in a negative tone!
- isoskeles 8y agoI've seen the FB / Soros story so much in the past couple of weeks that I wanted to point out a funny double-standard: Facebook isn't allowed to hire someone else to mention a famous Jewish person, but NYT is allowed to pin blame on Israel for the assassination of a journalist. Both seem trivial to me, but one is an anti-semitic dog-whistle and the other is, meh, let's pretend it's n.b.d. to involve Israel (i.e. Jews). Personally, I'm saying it's roughly as anti-semitic as Sheryl Sandberg hiring someone to say something true about George Soros -- as in, neither is anti-semitic. But I think the bigger issue is the double-standard.