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WhatsApp sues NSO Group for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world
- kd3 7y agoWoooow. Im almost speechless. Unprecedented indeed. I never would have expected this from zuckerberg.
- pesenti 7y agoWaPo Oped https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-whatsapp-is-pushing-back-nso-group-hacking/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-whats...
- teh_klev 7y agoPaywall.
- tedivm 7y agoJust open it in incognito mode to bypass the paywall.
- eli 7y agoOr pay for it
- tyingq 7y agoThat doesn't scale terribly well for urls shared in a public space. How many subscriptions do I need? WaPo, NYT, Guardian, Financial Times, Medium, Boston Globe, LA Times, Scientific American, GQ, Epicurios, etc. Those folks should get together and offer a shared subscription model.
- eli 7y agoThe economics have never really worked for a shared subscription model despite many attempts. Apple News+ is the most recent example. So, yeah, if you regularly read more than the free allocation for each of those publications in a month, you should consider paying for them. Which ones you "need" is your call.
- tyingq 7y agoI get that it's maybe unsolvable. But in the narrow space of sharing urls on HN, downvoting complaints about paywalls feels silly to me. They made their own bed, they can lie in it. I actively work around paywalls, and have ZERO guilt about it. Your business model failed, and I give zero shits. I want to know what's happening, and am willing to pay $10/month to to fix that across ALL of you that were affected. If you can't solve it entirely, I don't care. Take my $10/month, split it, and shut up or quit bitching.
- kick 7y ago'eli runs a media company and has marketing copy in their HN bio; it's very unlikely they're commenting in good faith.
- tyingq 7y agoAhh, yeah...thanks for the context. To me, if you have an aggresive paywall, then public moaning about globally sharing your useless urls is expected. Deal with it. The complainers and workarounders aren't the core problem. Attention @dang and other HN admin people, this is a constant annoyance. It's time to deal with it. I totally get your position, and your limitations, but it happens EVERY DAY. It is NOT going away, and it's getting worse. It is very clearly making HN less useful. Is there someone more infutiential than me that could post an "Ask HN" thread that people might rally around? Feeling enflamed, but not particularly influential. Alternatively, is there a way for me to msg @dang personally? (mentioned specifically because I personally applaud and respect his past history and responses)
- tyingq 7y agohttps://outline.com/8TFYuj https://outline.com/8TFYuj (Put the URL in bitly then submit to outline)
- inglor 7y agoMy wife works for NSO, Facebook closed down the personal accounts of anyone working for NSO which is quite the aggressive move. I definitely see things warming up.
- alasdair_ 7y agoNSO are directly implicated in aiding the Saudis murder a US resident and Washington Post journalist. They knew exactly who they were selling to and how their tools would be used. NSO are of the same level of people as those who sold cattle prods to Saddam after knowing how their tool would be used.
- tedivm 7y agoGood. People who work for companies doing immoral things should definitely face repercussions for it.
- sodosopa 7y agoI agree, hopefully Facebook is broken up and prevented from profiting on propaganda and user data.
- hinkley 7y agoIf you're wondering if a bunch of facebook lovers downvoted you, at least one of them wasn't.
- sodosopa 7y agoI appreciate the honesty.
- dang 7y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- londons_explore 7y agoWhatsapp still processes complex data from any stranger in the world entirely without a sandbox. It's E2E encryption is like sending and receiving messages with a top security truck, but then on arrival, storing them in a tent. The fault here really relies on the design of whatsapp. Not the thieves who saw an open door.
- tptacek 7y agoThat's... not how culpability works.
- darawk 7y agoThe fact that you leave your door unlocked doesn't excuse someone burglarizing your house. Facebook and Whatsapp totally deserve blame for lax security here, but that does absolutely nothing to absolve NSO of exploiting that weak security.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- olliej 7y agoLet's look at a house analogy: * If I leave the door unlocked is someone entering it and taking my property my fault? According to insurance companies it often is, but not the law. Who's side are you on? * If I've locked the door, but there's a window that doesn't latch properly, is it my fault? * If my door doesn't have a kick plate, is it my fault for not providing adequate security? * if they break the windows, is it my fault for not having bars on my windows? Making software secure is hard, but saying that the existence of any bug instantly means that the software manufacturer is culpable for how someone [ab?]uses those flaws is clearly nonsense. No one wants to deliver software with bugs in it, but NSO is clearly ok using those flaws to attack and kill reporters and HRAs.
- saagarjha 7y agoWhat kind of sandbox should WhatsApp have used?
- 7y ago
- sodosopa 7y agoIt’s difficult for me to feel sorry for Facebook. They do the world a disservice. I just hope this moves more people away from WhatsApp Edit Wow -2 in less than a minute. YC loves Facebook.
- dang 7y agoYou're no doubt being downvoted for posting unsubstantive flamebait. Plenty of substantive comments here don't "loves Facebook". Please read the site guidelines and follow them when posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sodosopa 7y agoFacebook does the world a disservice. https://medium.com/@ZoomBubba/facebook-does-us-all-a-disservice-2fe611d963 https://medium.com/@ZoomBubba/facebook-does-us-all-a-disserv...
- icebraining 7y agoYes, but that's unrelated to this lawsuit.
- ahbyb 7y agoI wonder if this will create a precedent?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Jerry2 7y agoWhere's the DoJ in all of this? Why aren't they filing criminal charges against the NSO?
- AndrewBissell 7y agoProbably for the same reason the Trump admin whitewashed the Khashoggi murder.
- goodluckchuck 7y agoExcept the administration was very early to confirm for journalists that were on the right track and soon thereafter publicly confirmed they had audio of it and shared the audio with journalists and essentially is the whole reason we know about it.
- doubt_me 7y agoTrumps personal cult would find reasons to charge the hacking victims and their families. Why charge NSO? After whatsapp is done suing them they'll be re branded under a different group so when the DOJ hires them everything will be back to normal operating procedures. Everything is totally fine. Nothing to see here.
- tw04 7y agoSee: Jared Kushner
- tptacek 7y agoIs there some relationship between NSO Group and Jared Kushner? I don't see any connection other than that Kushner notoriously is a user of WhatsApp.
- kick 7y agoThe implication is probably pointing to Kushner's alleged habit of talking to foreign contacts on the app, speaking officially, rather than his use on its own: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/jared-kushner-whatsapp-house-oversight-information https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/jared-kushne... Whether their conclusion is accurate though is dubious.
- anon007 7y agoWhy is the moderator censoring "Israel" out of the title of the original article? "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world"
- dfcagency 7y agoThe original title should be reinstated.
- jjridkffn 7y agoFunnily enough HN has no problem naming “Russian” or “Chinese” in analogous headlines.
- enjoyyourlife 7y agoBecause it's a company, not a country. It's like referring to Google as "America's Google." Also, the article has nothing to do with Israel besides the company being located there. Don't try to politicize everything.
- tyingq 7y agoIt does take a lot of context out. I know what Google is. No idea what "NSO" is.
- ____a 7y agoI saw this article earlier wanted to read comments on it here. It had already been posted five or six times, but never made it to the front page. Glad it finally did as it should. But what a weird dynamic.
- jb_s 7y agois there a HN discord or something?
- downandout 7y agoIt wouldn't surprise me, even if it were not officially sanctioned. Perhaps this is just the human desire to find patterns in everything, but I have seen at least some evidence of coordinated up/downvoting that pushes specific agendas on here. The unending GDPR fanboyism is one example. It's either the worst case of groupthink I have ever seen, or people are coordinating.
- saagarjha 7y agoIt's no secret that many people on Hacker News would like stronger privacy regulation.
- downandout 7y agoI don't want to get into a long GDPR discussion, but the idea of privacy regulation is great. GDPR, however, is deeply flawed. Yet any comment even attempting to discuss those flaws in a rational manner are instantly downvoted into oblivion, while comments glossing over its flaws are instantly upvoted. It's pretty clear that there is some coordination going on.
- DavidHm 7y agoNot trying to be snarky, but my experience is almost exactly the opposite. I can't comment on voting patterns, but while GDPR was being prepared, and after it was released, there was an endless barrage of posts claiming how it was flawed, lead to the ruin of technology companies in Europe etc, and it should be replaced by something else (anything else, at some point in the future - and in the meanwhile please stop getting in the way of tech companies trying to make a profit) Frankly I would not be surprised if there was indeed a reflexive downvote effect that is not caused by a shady conspiracy but rather people like me who are tired of posts like that.
- walrus01 7y ago"The Canadian researchers who reported that Israeli software was used to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi's inner circle before his gruesome death are being targeted in turn by international undercover operatives, The Associated Press has found." https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/citizen-lab-toronto-undercover-israeli-software-1.4994068 https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/citizen-lab-toronto-under...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wavefunction 7y agoThis twitter user claims an identity for one of the spies that were targeting Citizen Lab: https://twitter.com/bibken/status/1089991510203027457 https://twitter.com/bibken/status/1089991510203027457 Found this tweet by reverse image searching and looking a few pages down in the results.
- Buge 7y agoThere have been a number of articles mentioning that same guy. Apparently he's an employee of Black Cube. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citizen-lab-intelligence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citi...
- paganel 7y agoEmployees of the same company targeted the email accounts of Laura Codruta Kovesi a few years ago (she’s now the first ever European Public Prosecutor [1]). Back at that time she was the chief of the Romanian anti-corruption agency and she was doing a pretty good job, which was unfortunate for some of the local oligarchs and corrupt politicians who tried everything to bring her down. Afaik the Black Cube employees’ hacking actions were pretty lame, I remember reading that some of them had checked in at one of the most expensive Bucharest hotels during their operation, literally a couple of hundred meters away from one of the headquarters of our local counter-intelligence agency. I had been under the false impression that if you try to carry out such an action you at least try not to phisically show yourself in front of the people who are supposed to catch you. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Codruța_Kövesi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Codruța_Kövesi
- ____a 7y agoAn incredible quote: "Defendants subsequently complained that WhatsApp had closed the vulnerability. Specifically, NSO Employee 1 stated, “You just closed our biggest remote for cellular ... It’s on the news all over the world.”"
- chmod775 7y agoWhat are you quoting? That sentence doesn't appear in the article.
- tptacek 7y agoThey're quoting the actual civil complaint.
- TheHypnotist 7y agoSomeone posted the .pdf above, it's in there.
- rushikesh98 7y agoSource?
- TheHypnotist 7y agohttps://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/29/ngogrouplawsuit.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/29/ngogrouplawsuit.pdf
- chatmasta 7y agoSpecifically page 10. Still wondering where the original quote came from. Who was this person talking to? Presumably "you" refers to FB, but what was the situation that an NSO employee was complaining to FB?
- Arbalest 7y agoFound in https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/29/ngogrouplawsuit.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/10/29/ngogrouplawsuit.pdf
- nostromo 7y agoThis is the same company (NSO) that helped the Saudis brutally murder and dismember a journalist. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/world/middleeast/saudi-khashoggi-spyware-israel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/world/middleeast/saudi-kh...
- gnode 7y agoI find it interesting that NSO, an Israeli surveillance technology company, was allowed to have such dealings with Saudi Arabia. Their statement that "the sole purpose of NSO is to provide technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies [...]" implies that their technology is subject to export controls. My understanding is that Saudi Arabia has poor diplomatic relations with Israel.
- arcanim 7y agoYou have no idea. They don't. Israelis have been cozying up to Saudi and UAE for a while now, while it's not something you will read about in the major newspapers yet, you will find articles written about this by smaller publications. People only think Saudi must have poor relations with Israel based on somewhat outdated geopolitics, it's basically an assumption because "Saudi is an Arab country and therefore Israel must not do stuff with them", except you find out this is somewhat ridiculously false even going back decades, with all kinds of Arab regimes/groups dealing with Israelis. Just remember one thing the Arab people != the Arab regimes. They are mostly corrupt and could care less what their citizens actually want, so this should make more sense to you. You can look up several cases of Israeli companies (many with ties to the state) dealing with Arab countries. This is true especially of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt & Jordan (which actually both have treaties with Israel... And somewhat less secret official relations). Most people don't know enough about the Middle East or pay enough attention to their politics to notice these things, which is understandable if you're not from the region. There was also that documentary made by Al Jazeera about Israeli lobbies (which was censored btw, ironically enough due to Israeli lobbying... What a great way to prove their point), in that documentary one of those guys mentions contacts in Arab countries. Honestly at this point anybody paying attention should have realized these ties. This shouldn't even be surprising all these countries involved are corrupt and shitty, Israel is only looked at in a weird way in the United States, outside of it people realize how extremely shitty that country is, if it wasn't for the US interests and Israeli Lobbies which in turn influence politics and Corporate media most Americans would see Israel as garbage, unless they are evangelicals. I don't think I need to talk about Saudi.
- guelo 7y agoI don't understand how NSO bypasses the anti-circumvention provisions of the WIPO Copyright Treaty which Israel has signed. In any case, the fact that what they do is not illegal in Israel is a condemnation of Israel's moral character.
- 55555 7y agoIsrael is home to many industries focused on fraud or crime against citizens of other nations. And they generally don't extradite their citizens which makes the problem worse. See also the "forex" and "binary" industry based out of Israel.
- dobbsbobjr 7y agoThe Talmud says that if a gentile's 0x gorges a Jew, the gentile mist compensate him. However, it conveniently leaves out any language describing if the Jew must compensate the gentile. The Hasidic community is the worst at this. Take, for example, Joseph Prushinowski who created a fake bank and ran off with over $190,000,000 in the 1960s dollars. It took Prushnikowski 13 years to get caught, because he choose banks run and owned by gentile. Both the hasidic community and the mossad. $190m helps buy weapons to evict a lot of Palestinians in order to turn their homes into settlements and give them to the chosen people, so who cares if he's robbing them, they're goyim. He finally screwed up in 1998, after running successful scams in Canada, USA, Denmark, Sweden, Nederlands, England and Australia. The only reason he was caught was he decided to get greedy and steal from gentiles in Israel. Go figure.
- tptacek 7y agoIs "what they do" letter-of-the-law illegal in the US? There are firms in the US that sell vulnerabilities and implant software.
- PeterisP 7y agoI believe that the distinction lies in "state actor" immunity. A USA company selling stuff to USA state agencies won't be prosecuted by USA courts because that use presumably isn't criminal in US law; you could have legal challenges to the agency itself but in general the seller can assume that it's the responsibility of USA gov't if they break their own laws. An Israeli company selling stuff to foreign agencies that gets used "elsewhere" on other citizens won't be prosecuted by USA courts because they don't have jurisdiction and it's none of their business if some other government decides to wiretap or torture-murder some of their citizens in their territory with the assistance of that stuff. But if a foreign government hacks a phone of someone on USA soil, then that's a crime in USA and it doesn't matter if it was legal under their laws or they had proper warrants or whatever, USA law doesn't have an exception for that unless that wiretapping was done in cooperation with USA authorities under whatever procedures they consider appropriate. And if some company is complicit with assisting that crime then it can be targeted by USA courts, if it can reach their people or assets somehow. I.e. it's not that "doing this is unaccaptable as such", but "doing this in USA requires permission from USA - we had it, you did not".
- einpoklum 7y agoHmph... pot calling the kettle black. Facebook (which owns WhatsApp) engages in mass surveillance / info gathering / spying on its users. It does so on behalf of its paying clients (= not the users); and also on behalf of the US government: The NSA gets a copy of most of everything (as we know due following Snowden's revelations). So, Facebook definitely intrudes on people privacy, even if it doesn't "hack phones". Still, I wish _both_ companies had to face harsh consequences for their conduct.
- tw04 7y agoFacebook has been selling information about journalists to governments who intend to assassinate said journalists? Do you have a source for that claim? Otherwise equating the two is ridiculous.
- einpoklum 7y agoFacebook has been giving out information for free, about all people, including anyone the US intends to assassinate, to the US government. Whether the US government was actually intending to assassinate any of Facebook's users - I have no idea; I don't have access to the assassination lists the president signs.
- sodosopa 7y agoTsk tsk. The sycophants on HN don't like when you criticize Facebook.
- jrochkind1 7y agoSued them under what law/legal theory? Wait... is it CFAA? That would be... an interesting door to open! Found the complaint, yep! > Plaintiffs bring this action for injunctive relief and damages pursuant to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, and the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, California Penal Code § 502, and for breach of contract and trespass to chattels. I like the idea of using the CFAA like this, of that becoming a thing. Had to find the complaint cause none of the articles I could find on it mentioned the CFAA, which is weird since that's news.
- tptacek 7y agoCivil CFAA (unauthorized access to WhatsApp infrastructure, including their relay servers, to target WhatsApp users), California's Computer Data Access & Fraud act (same, but CCDAF also has kickers like specific liability for spreading malware), breach (WhatsApp has a EULA), and trespass to chattels. (sorry, wrote this before you fleshed out your comment, but presumably it's helpful to someone else)
- MikeGale 7y agoThe architecture of the system is important here too. 1. Do the regimes buy the software and set it up themselves, or does NSO set it up and they use the service provided? 2. If the former is there a route to go for Saudi, Mexican, UAE, Bahraini... governments? ---
- tptacek 7y agoYou are explicitly (and, if you read Dan's moderator comments, repeatedly) asked not to conduct public hunts for astroturf comments on HN threads. If you think you've seen a pattern of corrupt comments, tell hn@ycombinator.com directly.
- MikeGale 7y agoThanks, I haven't noticed any of those comments. I'll mull that over.
- dang 7y agoAppreciated! It's a big deal, which is why I've posted so much about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoThe Citizenlab report will probably answer most of your questions about this. https://citizenlab.ca/2019/10/nso-q-cyber-technologies-100-new-abuse-cases/ https://citizenlab.ca/2019/10/nso-q-cyber-technologies-100-n...
- comex 7y agoLink to the actual complaint (PDF): https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6532395/WhatsApp-complaint.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6532395/WhatsApp-... Always annoys me when news reports leave that out. Edit: IANAL, but quick take: WhatsApp might succeed, but their case would be much stronger if they had one or more of the victims as co-plaintiffs. As it is: - Their CFAA claim can only cover unauthorized access to WhatsApp’s servers – but NSO didn’t hack those servers; the servers just fulfilled their normal job of acting as a relay for WhatsApp messages, except in this case the messages were designed to exploit other clients. A victim would be able to sue over unauthorized access to their phone itself. (WhatsApp does also have the terms-of-service complaint though.) - WhatsApp can only seek damages for reputational harm the hacks caused to the company itself - not any kind of harm to the victims. However, they’re also seeking an injunction preventing NSO from continuing to exploit WhatsApp, which might be more interesting than damages if they can get it.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoNot a lawyer either but CFAA has been used for more than plain hacking. WhatsApp servers and infrastructure was used to hack WhatsApp users. Clearly they violated the spirit of the law, it's fraud at least.
- sterlind 7y ago> Their CFAA claim can only cover unauthorized access to WhatsApp’s servers – but NSO didn’t hack those servers; the servers just fulfilled their normal job of acting as a relay for WhatsApp messages, By that logic a website provider wouldn't have standing if they suffered an XSS attack (though any affected users would), which is interesting. IANAL, but it looks like the CFAA defines offenses in terms of the "protected computer" that was accessed - for instance, unauthorized access to that computer, or stealing information from that computer, or damages that computer. That seems weird, but the alternative would be weirder: if every computer in the chain were a violation, the ISP for each hop of the network connection would have standing together. It's hard to make a case that WhatsApp is different from a regular router which might also pass malicious messages.
- 7y ago
- HashThis 7y agoThey better win. But they probably won't. I love that finally the victim has the ability to use courts across countries.
- arthurcolle 7y agoSorry, wait, by the "victim" -- you mean Google, i.e. assembly line of data assimilation?
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoI really hope they lose. If they win, WhatsApp (and by precedent, everyone else) is less incentivized to invest in technical solutions, and exploits will still be bought and sold among even shadier players. Take the Saudis for example. They have a desire to hack phones, an unlimited budget for hacking tools, and no ethics. The market will create other players to capture the millions of dollars they have on the table, and they’ll do it out of reach of the courts. WhatsApp is facing brand damage because people are hearing that they can get hacked (and in some cases, possibly die) if they use their software. Their two options are to either invest in better security, or use the legal system. I think it’s better for everyone if the only option is for companies to actually fix their software. If WhatsApp paid whatever NSO does to acquire bugs, nobody would sell to NSO. This is the same reason that Apple recently increased their bounty. Nobody was giving bugs to Apple because the grey market paid more.
- Rarebox 7y agoWhatsApp would still be plenty incentivized to make their software secure. They understand that this wouldn't get rid of the exploit market, or state actors. I'm sure WhatsApp has been focusing a lot on security lately because of the brand damage. Even if it wasn't effective in practice, entering this lawsuit can be seen as a message to users that WhatsApp is serious about protecting people's privacy. Setting a precedent here might force remaining actors to stay shady instead of acting in the open, which would make it harder for them to operate (so they'd be less effective). However, I have no idea what other consequences a precedent here might have. Definitely interesting.
- 7y ago
- rolltiide 7y agoCooley really making a name for themselves out here
- KibbutzDalia 7y agoNSO is a great company. I’d love to work for them. They speak truth to power and call Apple on their “secure by design” marketing nonsense.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoI don’t like NSO or what they do, but I don’t think I’m comfortable with the idea that there is legal liability here. I wonder how much of that hinges on the fact that the messages had to transit WhatsApp servers, even if they didn’t actually hack any WhatsApp infrastructure. By that same logic, it seems like an SMS exploit targeting a handset could make you liable to AT&T as well.
- alasdair_ 7y ago> By that same logic, it seems like an SMS exploit targeting a handset could make you liable to AT&T as well. This seems fine to me. Take a different common carrier like the US post office - using the mail to carry out a crime can lead to the additional (and oft-prosecuted) additional crime of mail fraud.
- qtplatypus 7y agoI am not sure that I am uncomfortable with that. If you are using AT&T's network to commit abuse then you are disrupting the usefulness of that network. I think that the equivalent would be if you committed fraud using the postal system the postal service being able to take legal action against you.
- mcny 7y agoI'm very uncomfortable with the criminal aspects of cfaa (US government vs Joe Small Man) but I think I'm ok with civil cases as long as we agree that we are not into boats.
- qtplatypus 7y agoTrue. Though I can see some situations where the criminal aspects would be acceptable. Such as a case where hacking was the proximate cause of catastrophic harm (like a criminal using an insecure industrial control system to crash a power grid). I am almost willing to support criminal aspects in this case. Extrajudicial killing was a predictable result in giving these tools to repressive governments.
- 7y ago
- ENOTTY 7y agoIt's interesting that WhatsApp is suing NSO for CFAA violations under the theory that NSO violated WhatsApp's T&C (paragraph 54). This is the same theory that organizations like the EFF believe is too vague and gives too much freedom to prosecutors to bring criminal charges against people. So I'm curious how the EFF will react to this.
- DSingularity 7y agoLol nice. The lawsuit is requesting as relief a permanent injunction Against NEO barring them from using Facebook and WhatsApp for any reason.
- awaythrowitnow 7y agoWait, you're telling me Israel is doing something wrong? Impossible! The holocaust! Israelis are beyond reproach!
- chriselles 7y agoI’m wondering if this is the specific reason(or one of the reasons) why serving 5 Eyes military folks I know all seemed to ditch WhatsApp approx 20 months ago.
- ur-whale 7y agoNot everything FB does is evil then ... unless it's a PR stunt, of course.
- s_dev 7y agoIf WhatsApp is end to end encrypted then how can spies can access messages?
- Medicalidiot 7y agoI'm assuming gaining access to the phone itself. This is probably and exploit via the WhatsAPP app that allows privilege escalation of some type. Note: I'm in the medical field and this is not my expertise.
- s_dev 7y agoSo Facebook are suing NSO for having hacked Apples or Googles software? My point is once end to end encryption is enabled -- no MITM vulnearabilities should exist. Kind of like how password managers protect your password -- not even they can see it. I think this is indicative that Facebook doesn't enable true end to end encryption so they can read messages themselves but advertise that they don't to attract the privacy dollar.
- joewee 7y agoYou misunderstand how end to end encryption works and what the vulnerabilities were. These are not MITM attacks. I suggest you read the article or the affidavit, they do a good job explaining what happened.
- dobbsbobjr 7y agoCan you imagine calling NSO tech support Shalom and welcome to NSO, your chosen spy partner. Please hold <hold music> <ring> Hi I'm trying to kill this journa.. PLEASE WAIT FOR AN OPERATOR <hold music> <ring> Hi, are you there? PLEASE HOLD ... OK What's your name Sir? ..information exchanged. OK what are you trying to do? We are trying to kill this journalist but we are having problems getting into his phone Did you try rebooting? Yes. Please reboot and turn it off for 10 seconds .. OK sir we were able to get into his phone remotely, he's going to be at the Istanbul consulate tomorrow at 08:00. Yes his wife will be with him, waiting outside. Thanks! Great, Sir, enjoy your beheadingk, is there anything else we can do to help? Would you mind, after this call, completing a 3-question survey to rate your satisfaction with this experience.
- davidf18 7y agoFacebook is a leading hi-tech firm with a lot of money to spend on writing hacking-hardened software. They spent $21 billion for WhatsApp. They could also offer $10 million rewards for hacking the WhatsApp security. Suing NSO does not stop any other firm from hacking WhatsApp in the future.