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How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this
by bjourne 6y ago
How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this exploit are clearly "brilliant" and at least some of them are bound to be reading Hacker News. Is other countries' spyware firms just better at hiding their malware than Israel's is?
- ipv6ipv4 6y agoIt’s called selection bias. It’s fun and always acceptable to hate on Israel. It’s also more memorable due to the sensationalization of it. A few years ago bluecoat systems was caught providing deep packet inspection gear to the Syrian government. But that wasn’t Israel so no biggie and you either never heard about it or didn’t pay much attention because it wasn’t Israel. American and European companies do this all the time but it’s not sensationalized to the same degree. That’s just business as usual.
- z3ncyberpunk 6y agoyes, because the NSA never gets criticized for ethics violations...
- fortran77 6y agoNSO is owned by a UK-based private equity group. It's not even an "Israeli" company.
- mola 6y agoOh, that's such formal crap. The Founders are Israeli, RND is Israeli, most employees are Israelis in israel. It's an Israeli company. As an Israeli with very similar background to the people who work there I'm ashamed of our industry involvement in this disgusting business.
- stevenjohns 6y agoI don't believe that happened the way you describe it. Blue Coat was illegally on-sold to Syria from a UAE-based distributor and that company received a 200% fine of the sale price.
- bjourne 6y agoYou may have a point, but I think DPI and malware targeting journalists is not quite in the same ballpark.
- turing_complete 6y agoYou think it is "fun" to hate on Israel?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- captain_price7 6y ago>It’s fun and always acceptable to hate on Israel Don't people routinely get called anti-semite for just criticizing the Israeli government? Except for some small circles, I don't think your statement is true, it's certainly not true for mainstream US politics.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoYou know what's even more acceptable? Dismissing any criticism of Israel as "anti-semitism", absolving them of any wrongdoing whatsoever. This happens every time like clockwork when talking about the Israeli defense industry and the horrible things they do.
- keyme 6y agoWhen HackingTeam was exposed, no one was asking to sanction Italy. Hating on Israel specifically is a very cool and woke thing to do. Has been for decades.
- j0ej0ej0e 6y ago> Hating on Israel specifically is a very cool and woke thing to do. Has been for decades. Well Israeli has been treating palestinians pretty badly so it's not like it isn't justified. At least critising Israel for genuine reasons isn't deemed anti-semitic in the latest international standard of the definition, oh wait!
- xinniethepooh 6y agoDepending on when your justifiability timeline begins, Palestine is occupying the area illegally.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoSane people hold others culpable for what they do and not the sins of their fathers. By that sane metric, Israel is by far the more complicit of the two entities, and everyone knows it. Even the biggest, baddest ally of Israel (America) has a population where the vast majority are opposed to supporting them any more because of what they've been doing right now.
- Splendor 6y agoI don't care when or how Palestinians came to the area. Their treatment is immoral.
- Daho0n 6y agoIllegally living in slums and being killed by those they oppress and occupy? Oh please.
- captain_price7 6y agoOh come on. It's not like Italy has been bombing foreign scientists, sending assassins all around the world, or illegally occupying an entire country for seven decades.
- rapsey 6y agoIsrael has a large security industry with deep ties to their military. More so than other countries.
- alpb 6y agoSpecifically, Israel has a huge cybersecurity software business around selling oppressive regimes NSA-style tools of mass surveillance and spyware kits. This is a government-sanctioned industry (US intelligence is in this too), and doesn't seem to have any ethics. Here are some stories: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-government-okayed-sale-of-spyware-that-exploits-iphones/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-government-okayed-sale... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-nso-exclusive/exclusive-fbi-probes-use-of-israeli-firms-spyware-in-personal-and-government-hacks-sources-idUSKBN1ZT38B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-nso-exclusive/e... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ThePadawan 6y ago> Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? ...Is ethis taught in any CS curriculum? It sure wasn't in mine (but to be fair, that was in Switzerland).
- cowsandmilk 6y agoIt is required for a program to be accredited by abet in the US
- strangeloopworm 6y agoIt was in mine, in the UK. As expected, it was viewed as just another requirement, and nobody took it seriously
- RpFLCL 6y agoIt was a requirement for my Software Engineering degree (my university was in the US). When discussing with my coworkers in the past, I don't think many of them were required to take any ethics courses, unfortunately. Ethics in software is something we should all probably talk about a little more often.
- ThePadawan 6y agoMy alma mater treated CS more like "Applied Math", to the degree that I don't think that anyone in the department viewed Software Engineering as a major source of employment after the (Master's) degree. Viewed from the lens of "CS is a researcher/PhD candidate mill", a lack of focus on ethics makes some sense to the cynic in me.
- iamjake648 6y agoIt was a required in my program. State school, USA.
- bjourne 6y agoIt was taught in mine. Lots of focus on stuff like gender issues, discrimination, and academic dishonesty (don't cheat or plagiarize, etc). The guy who held the ethic course also held the course in abstract computer science. He most definitely would've been displeased had his students used what he taught them to write malware targeting journalists!
- mike_d 6y ago> How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Everyone seems to be focusing on the "always" in your statement, so i'll ignore that and give you a straight answer. Strong investment in STEM education, after school programming and computer security programs, mandatory military service where they get a chance to evaluate everyone and funnel the smart technical folks in to Unit 8200, and heavy investment into security startups. Israel also benefits from everyone else depending on their tools. Not only do they get to see the intelligence being collected by other countries and gain insights into their espionage operations, they also would be able to piggy back into any networks that were of particular interest.
- TruthHurts44 6y agoNo,they do not. Israelis are also big in the Forex "trading", Binary options, porn websites, etc
- bzb6 6y agoI would tell you why, but I would get banned.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago> How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Personal opinion, but I think the mandatory army service in Israel seems to teach that everything is 'defense' and Israel is always 'defending itself', no matter what, this sort of thinking then bleeds into the private sector as these guys leave the military and use the skills they learned there to establish businesses. Having interacted with the Palestinians during their army service as 'the enemy', the victims of NSO undoubtedly fall into the same category, thus not worth loosing their sleep over.
- tweetle_beetle 6y agoThere is the idea that being the stronger side in a constant state of conflict with a neighbour for decades suits Israel economically, despite the human cost on both sides. Combined with national service, it creates a highly credible testing ground for public and private development of defence products, technologies and services, which are extremely valuable exports. A country of its size and only relative recent independence, is punching well above its weight being the 8th largest arms exporter in the world over the last decade.[1] [1] http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/toplist.php http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/toplist.php
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago>There is the idea that being the stronger side in a constant state of conflict with a neighbour for decades suits Israel economically, despite the human cost on both sides. In a way this also applies to America, with their 20-year-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- secfirstmd 6y agoIt's not always Israeli companies. For example we have seen attacks in journalists, NGO workers and activists from Hacking Team which is Italian, Finisher / Gamma International which is Germany or British (IIRC), then there are other hacking groups for hire from India. Of course then there is state stuff from Russia, China amongst others.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y agoIf I had to guess.... as a person who once did a fair amount of business in the middle east, but Egypt and not Israel... I had a former customer there _go out of business_ when the Barack Hussein Obama (mmm mmm mmm!) administration supportd an attempted putsch by (in my customer's words) "The Retarded F___ing Nazis who killed Sadat for making peace with the Jews." Israel and the non-Brotherhood Arab countries face the burdensome situation that their most reliable "ally" is a country that depending on the politics is going to support the Brotherhood _and_ the large wannabe-hegemonic Russian satellite state trying to develop nuclear weapons. (Oh, and funded said state's reconquest of Syria in the process). Said schizophrenic state also has a massive surveillance system of its own. My guess: they all don't look at this as a violation of civil rights or ethics, they look at this as a means for the little countries like them to get a leg up on some of the insane intelligence agencies of the large countries that are funding enemies both domestic and foreign.
- salmon 6y agoIsrael has mandatory military service and part of it's military is an elite hacking group known as Unit 8200[0]. Members of this unit who leave the military have founded a huge number of information security and antivirus companies based in Israel (mostly in Tel Aviv)[1]. ---- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200#Companies_founded_by_alumni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200#Companies_founded_by...