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U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware
- smoldesu 5y agoHuh, it looks like suing a state-sponsored malware manufacturer doesn't prevent them from continuing to hijack your devices. Live and learn, I suppose.
- nojito 5y agoThis is based on Apple notifying the employees based on prior behavior of NSO.
- BillSaysThis 5y agoSuing is hardly the same as having the suit decided, grow up.
- redsummer 5y agoJews Rock!
- Lamad123 5y agoMan, the man is killing us, man!!
- DeathArrow 5y agoI'm curious what the iPhones being hacked means as they were thought by general public as being very secure. Would this imply 0-day exploits? Did they use backdoors put in place for US spying agencies?
- azernik 5y agoZero-days. "They and other targets notified by Apple in multiple countries were infected through the same graphics processing vulnerability that Apple did not learn about and fix until September, the sources said. Since at least February, this software flaw allowed some NSO customers to take control of iPhones simply by sending invisible yet tainted iMessage requests to the device, researchers who investigated the espionage campaign said."
- temptemptemp111 5y ago[dead]
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- larrybohboh 5y agoThis same spyware is mostly used on activist. You can read more on pegasus via https://larrybohboh.com/pegasus-spyware-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-hack-phones/ https://larrybohboh.com/pegasus-spyware-what-is-it-and-how-d...
- iwasnothere 5y agoWith friends like this, who needs friends? Oh there was a typo in the post. 's/NSO Group/Mossad/' Fixed it. It's surprising to me that nobody mentions the fact that the NSO group cannot exist without the approval and support of the Israeli government.
- puskavi 5y ago"Our greatest ally"
- newbamboo 5y ago“ NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1.” Seems like they just need to add a similar patch for apple ids for emails ending in “state.gov”. Not sure why this is such a big deal.
- whatshisface 5y agoCome on, think about it. Doesn't work for phone numbers starting with +1? So, anyone who buys the right sim card is immune? A team of professional hackers can't find the if-else in the attack binary that enforces that to disable it? They're selling software to cybersecurity teams on the assumption that they can't crack it?
- RealityVoid 5y agoMy understanding is that it's not _just_ a tool, but a whole infrastructure around it that the clients use. So presumably, before deploying to a target, it would need to go through NSO infrastructure, so they could vet there.
- indymike 5y ago> A team of professional hackers can't find the if-else in the attack binary that enforces that to disable it? It's probably easier than that. Seems like the kind of thing that would be in a config file (making this up, satire): [No Spying Allowed - please do not change] # Really, really, don't change this setting. We are not responsible if you do. +1 # USA +3542 # NSO Group > They're selling software to cybersecurity teams on the assumption that they can't crack it? No, I think they are telling journalists that their hands are clean, and it totally isn't their fault, not in a million years, that their customer changed their software.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 5y agowhich is pretty absurd since there's only a vague relationship in the modern SS7/PSTN between a phone's DID and where it might be physically located. In five minutes of work I could have a New Zealand number ring on my desk phone anywhere in the world.
- cblconfederate 5y agoTime to go back to rotary phones
- ArcCompArthur 5y agoThis post will be flagged shortly.
- DelightOne 5y agoIs there a timetable when Apple plans to stop using memory-unsafe languages to avoid memory-bugs? If not, how can the amount of zero-days stop with constant development?
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agobiggest issue here isn't memory safety but the dumpster fire of imessage format that calls out to privileged parts of the system
- vlovich123 5y agoWhich is exploitable primarily it by memory safety exploits. Will it make attacks impossible? Probably not totally. But it might raise the cost of the attack by an order of magnitude or more and certain classes of vulnerabilities might disappear completely.
- walrus01 5y agoI'm suspicious of any messaging system that has ties into rich media / embedded-in-chat content. I even wish I could disable URL previews, gifs, and inline images in Signal.
- elliekelly 5y agoI didn't know it was possible to disable URL previews in iMessage[1] until I read this comment. Does toggling this setting only prevent the preview from displaying or does it prevent the fetch altogether? I wish there were a way to white list the URL previews for certain contacts rather than turning it off all or nothing. [1]https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7677834 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7677834
- kingcharles 5y agoIt can be your "trusted" contacts that infect you though. "Jeff Bezos was hacked by a file sent from the WhatsApp account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos_phone_hacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos_phone_hacking
- boomboomsubban 5y ago>In a public response, NSO has said its technology helps stop terrorism and that they've installed controls to curb spying against innocent targets. For example, NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1. So the point is to stop terrorism and to do that they've immediately ruled that all Americans aren't terrorists. That doesn't seem like a good metric of determining if someone is a terrorist, and makes me doubt their other controls are any better.
- comrh 5y agoNSO has repeatedly shown that their statements are pretty much worthless. It's just damage control. I wouldn't put any stock in the "we avoid +1 numbers" to even be real.
- bogwog 5y agoSeriously, they're pretty much the Mark Zuckerberg of their industry.
- indymike 5y agoThat is not fair to Mark Zuckerberg.
- rory 5y agoThey're pretty much the General Butt Naked of their industry.
- submeta 5y agoI‘d rather compare Zuckerberg to the Sackler family who knew how addictive and harmful their painkiller Oxycotin was, yet ignoring all evicence, making billions of dollars. Zuckerberg knows how bad Facebook and Instagram is, how harmful to individuals and society alike, yet ignoring that and making billions. Edit: Replaced „social media“ with „Facebook and Instagram“
- walrus01 5y agoI'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant", as they have done with foreign citizen wahabbist jihadis and US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki. Given the extent and depth of US-Israeli cooperation and ties, the precedeing theoretical is probably going to remain in the realm of theoretical.
- afterburner 5y agoJust declare them a terrorist organization.
- azernik 5y agoThis isn't War on Terror-adjacent - it's a local repressive government catching embassy workers in a dragnet while spying on the opposition. The full security-state treatment will not be in effect. Still bad, though!
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoThey basically declared the embargoed Iranian corporations as enemy combatants a while ago, if that's what you mean.
- drusepth 5y agoDidn't they get pretty close with Huawei when the previous president issued an executive order in response to state spying fears that: * banned the sale of any of their phones or networking products in the US * banned US companies selling product to Huawei * cut funding to wireless carriers using Huawei equipment ...and then pressured allied countries to do the same?
- walrus01 5y agoThe investigation into Huawei was going on for many years prior to 2016. It's not exactly an initiative of the previous president. I sat in briefings about Huawei and ZTE in 2007. Regretfully can't say more.
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- starik36 5y agoI thought the exploited holes were patched by iOS at some point. How are these phones still getting hacked?
- azernik 5y agoThis is being publicized only now. The issues were patched in September, the exploit was being used as of February, and it took some time for someone to notice that an @state.gov Apple ID was among the compromised phones.
- kitsunesoba 5y agoPeople are notoriously bad at keeping their devices up to date, with some even intentionally disabling updates. This can be prevented by the IT department having MDM profiles with strict update enforcement in place, but I don’t have much hope that the IT department of any given US government office is particularly capable or competent.
- brynx97 5y agoThe article doesn't say if they were personal or work provided phones. Many people living/working overseas have work and personal phones. Also, almost all of those with personal phones get a local SIM, so they'd get a local non-US (not +1) phone number. I used to be an IT admin with DOS overseas. Updates were enforced, and phones were disabled if they were not upgraded to the most recent version. Starting in about 2019, mobile device security went into overdrive and is very serious now. Additionally, the MDM profiles are quite limiting, so this pushed most people to get personal phones. A huge pain for records retention.
- zibzab 5y agoBecause there is a never-ending supply of vulnerabilities in our smartphones. A system this complex can never be secure no matter what google/apple PR dep claims.
- odiroot 5y agoExploits are now a multi-billion dollar market. And iPhones can be obtained worldwide. You just need one person with questionable morals, good hardware hacking skills and a need for some hefty payout. There's a lot of buyers, Five Eyes, China, Russia and naturally companies like NSO.
- FredPret 5y agoSeems like not-the-smartest move for Israel to mess with one of the few powerful entities that desires its continued existence
- ElDji 5y agoand the one entity that give it wagons of usd.
- dr-detroit 5y agoThere is 0 popular support for Israel and their "religion of peace". Biden got in soooo much trouble for saying he would divest during the election.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoThis is just another incident in a long list that goes back decades of Israel getting carte blanche to do whatever they want to the US with little to no repercussion. The most famous probably being USS Liberty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident)
- amitport 5y agoReally? Have you actually read the Wikipedia page you're referring to? 50 years ago during a full scale war with all surrounding countries, Israel accidentally (as determined by US investigation) hit a "spy-ship" near Egypt (one if the countries participating in the war). Israel subsequenly paid around 70 million $ in compensation for the families.
- l33tbro 5y agoWhy would Israel be allowed to do whatever they want?
- kevingadd 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs...
- redman25 5y ago> NSO Group said in a statement on Thursday that it did not have any indication their tools were used but canceled the relevant accounts and would investigate based on the Reuters inquiry. Why would they cancel accounts without knowledge of wrongdoing?
- q1w2 5y agoAside from that obvious contradiction - this also indicates that the tools they deploy are either NSO hosted or use a licensing system to run. There was a recent Darknet Diaries episode that reported evidence that at least some of the NSO tools are hosted services.
- shmatt 5y agoI can't imagine something like this not being in the cloud. The potential for a customer to give their local NSA/8200 the tool to figure out the 0days used is too large Pegasus is only as good as its 0days are secret
- webmaven 5y ago> I can't imagine something like this not being in the cloud. The potential for a customer to give their local NSA/8200 the tool to figure out the 0days used is too large Heck, forget about bothering to extract 0-days; if you have access to the binary, straight-up warez techniques would be applied to nerf any restrictions (licensing or otherwise) on the operation of the software, as well as any monitoring functionality that can "phone home".
- faeyanpiraat 5y agoCouldn’t you hack your own phone and somehow log traffic to get the exploit used?
- GekkePrutser 5y agoYes you could. You could even use a fake phone which is wired to log everything. A lot of malware attempts to avoid VMs and stimulated environments but the actual 0 day would be before that point. If a state sponsored party really wants to find these zero days I'm sure they can. I would imagine that this is more like what happened with EternalBlue: it's something they know but don't report because it's useful to them too.
- classified 5y agoThe victims will be pleased to learn that they're all terrorists and criminals, as NSO keeps asserting that their spyware is only used against those.
- xbar 5y agoI wonder if we would be hearing about this if NSO had paid its 30% to Apple in the first place.
- bob-a-fet 5y agoOne settler colony hacks another settler colony, the one that had co-sponsored its creation along with Britain, the mothership of all settler colonies. Honor amongst thieves? No such thing.
- unknown2374 5y agoA book came out about a year ago by a fantastic academic about the history of settler colonialism by Israel in Palestine [1]. I'd suggest anyone who wants to learn more about Israel and values referenced record of history. The book is very well written, referenced (a sixth of the book is references) and comes highly regarded. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Years-War-Palestine-Resistance/dp/1627798552 https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Years-War-Palestine-Resistanc...
- jjclint 5y agoYour comment has nothing to do with the article. Stop shoving your sick agenda down our throats and save your "links" to yourself
- dang 5y agoWhoa - you can't attack another user like that here, regardless of how strongly you disagree. We ban accounts that post like this. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- dang 5y agoPlease do not take HN threads into generic flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- maltalex 5y agoI don't understand the focus on NSO in these stories. If U.S State Department personnel in Uganda were shot from an M-16, would the headline mention "an American arms manufacturer"? No, because it's ridiculous. For better or worse, NSO's product is a weapon. How is it any different from an M-16? Where is the outrage towards the people who used this weapon against the State Department?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 5y agoIt's my understanding that NSO runs centralized command and control servers that their "clients" are granted access to, for both the on-device payload installation and also data exfiltration. They do not give the software to their clients to go use somewhere in the world fully independently (self hosted payload dropper, C&C, etc) They're a direct participant in the network traffic. Unlike a dumb purely offline piece of hardware like a M4 rifle or similar.
- montblanc 5y agoSo selling an F-15 to the Saudis (like the U.S is doing in droves) is more morally justifable because what exactly..? After the plane is sold the Saudis are independent with it? (they aren't really btw. I'm sure there's maintenance and buying parts etc).
- walrus01 5y agoI am also not in favor of selling advanced weaponry to the saudis or pretty much any non-democratic regime. The US has a very poor historical track record of supporting strongmen that do brutal things. Pinochet. Suharto. MBS. I could write a very long list.
- phatfish 5y agoNone one else was talking about F-15s or drones in this thread. The only mention was of weapons that even civilians can buy is some countries and do not come with a support contract attached. IMO the US selling F-15s or drones to the Saudis is very similar. The US shouldn't be supporting the Saudis murdering civilians with F-15s, and Israel should not be supporting hacking tools that enable other governments (or private organizations) to murder people they dont like.
- varispeed 5y agoIsn't the actual problem that a private company is using security holes that presumably Apple opened for three letter agencies to use?
- SavantIdiot 5y agoThe Israel government gets a pass for anything they do. Whether it is lying about nukes or what they've done to Palestine. NSO is a feather in their cap.
- flyinglizard 5y agoWhy are you conflating Israel (a state) and NSO (a fully private company, owned by American private equity at some point)?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Why are you conflating Israel (a state) and NSO (a fully private company, owned by American private equity at some point)? Because Jerusalem has the power to stop, or at the very least regulate, NSO.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ignoramous 5y agoThe Israeli Ministry of Defense licenses the export of Pegasus to foreign governments, but not to private entities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group#Pegasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group#Pegasus
- flyinglizard 5y agoThese export controls for weapons exist in much of the western world. Once granted a license, Israel has no legal say in how the product is used by the end user. It’s all very routine and standard, not sure why people need basic explanations of what government export regulation is when the discussion is on Israel.
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- SavantIdiot 5y agoSlapping down the NSO doesn't fix the problem. We should be glad we even know that their software exists, imagine if it was completely hidden from the public? The problem is that Apple needs to fix this. Security is an arms race, and the more visibility we have into where it is weak, the better for everyone. To paraphrase the motorcycle repair episode of Winter Steele, "You are stronger now for having been fixed." IMHO.
- elliekelly 5y agoI don't think most Apple customers know or care so despite being ostensibly "privacy focused" Apple doesn't have much of an incentive to take action.
- fmajid 5y agoApple has demonstrated complacency on security issues. Stiffing security researchers on bug bounties is just one symptom, but so is the fact the market price for iOS exploits has cratered compared to Android ones.
- shmatt 5y agoGreat commentary. The US is hopefully looking into why these employees are using iPhones + local SIM. And if that has been approved in the past, maybe re-think that
- SavantIdiot 5y agoAre you implying there is a way to use an iPhone with a prophylactic defense against Pegasus? I was unaware one existed...
- aunty_helen 5y agoImagine that sinking feeling in the NSO offices. Uncle Sam's coming...
- sixothree 5y agoYou sure about that?
- azernik 5y agoYes. "A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department's recent decision to place the Israeli company on an entity list, making it harder for U.S. companies to do business with them. NSO Group and another spyware firm were "added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month."
- jiveturkey 5y agouh oh. That's a paddlin'
- cronix 5y agoAs an American, it's becoming harder for me to muster sympathy for an entity that actively discovers and exploits technological flaws to use against their adversaries while simultaneously purposefully not alerting the manufacturers in order to correct the flaws so they can continue to exploit them and then those flaws are subsequently discovered by others and used against them. Poor you.
- webmaven 5y ago> As an American, it's becoming harder for me to muster sympathy for an entity that actively discovers and exploits technological flaws to use against their adversaries while simultaneously purposefully not alerting the manufacturers in order to correct the flaws so they can continue to exploit them and then those flaws are subsequently discovered by others and used against them. It is worth distinguishing between the State Department and the NSA. The US government is hardly monolithic, even if we restrict our discussion to just the executive branch: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/05/the-nsa-is-trying-to-crack-tor-the-state-department-is-helping-pay-for-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/05...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoWhile I find it interesting that focus in comments appears to be on Israel, NSO and the complicated ( or not really that complicated if you look at it from a different angle ) relationship between them and US. I did not see a mention a broader discussion of, you know, hoarding zero days, exploits and whether using those can be worse than conventional weaponry. The reason I find it interesting is because it is clear that US government supports Israel ( and NSO ) practically unconditionally ( recent vote on Iron Dome being a more amusing example of bipartisanship ). Why is Reuters, an old guard by any account, concerned? Or are they simply following what sells and government is really at odds with its people when it comes to policy in ME.
- justin66 5y ago> Why is Reuters, an old guard by any account, concerned? Meta-concerns about "the media" are not relevant to every story that is ever published.
- vinniejames 5y agoThey shouldn't have anything to worry about, unless they have something to hide
- motohagiography 5y agoArguably, this is the real use case Pegasus was designed for. A government (Uganda) that does not have a large and mature civil service that would support a G7 level technical domestic intelligence agency went to market for the tools of one (NSO), so they can keep tabs on foreign intelligence agents (state department staff) in their country. I am not a fan of NSO at all, but this case sounds like they're providing sovereignty or statecraft as a service to a government that prefers to buy instead of build their security capability. When the game is defined as a competition for how to break its rules in the most unexpected ways and with the fewest consequences, Uganda appears to have joined in with aplomb. To me it's the first time an NSO story doesn't seem like a scandal.
- azernik 5y agoKind of? It seems like the main use case isn't a country that needs the tools of state-on-state spying; it's a country that needs the tools of Chinese-style domestic surveillance of the political opposition. In most cases where US persons have been targeted with NSO software, it's as part of operations against domestic dissidents, including in this case, where most of the usage was against Ugandan protesters.
- motohagiography 5y agoIf you are a state, NSO is what you get when you don't have Stingrays, PRISM, and a pipeline into domestic enforcement for paralell construction. Imo, in this specific case, it's equivalent.
- bjourne 5y agoThe "oh, but everyone is doing it!" argument. I don't for a second believe that other countries install spyware on foreign diplomats and other peoples phones. What NSO and the Israeli government is doing is rotten to the core and unless you have evidence of the contrary you cannot assert that other actors are doing the same thing.
- jimbob45 5y ago
- literallyaduck 5y agoLet's cancel their foreign aid, 3 Billion and change, and put a trade embargo until they pay back all their foreign aid.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- markus_zhang 5y agoThis is a typical "shadow government" symptom. You have forces working within the government that 1) have their own agendas; 2) have connection to international communities, usually military-intelligence ones; 3) have almost zero regulation; 4) even many high ranking government officials don't know about them because they are brotherhood-like closed circles. This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but domestic. Same playbook, different players.
- zaphirplane 5y agoThere is nothing supporting the theory or conclusion
- colordrops 5y agoWhat are you trying to suggest? It's just a typical reflexive reactive response to any comment that the government acts in ways other than presented to you by corporate media. It only takes 3 minutes of google searches or even a daily scan of Hacker News to see endless examples of government corruption and malfeasance. Government employees are only human after all, and there are millions of them. To think this sort of activity ends once you become an agent of the government is absurd.
- zaphirplane 5y agoTrying to suggest nothing, I am explicitly saying there is nothing in the article to lead a reasonable person down the shadow government and deep state path It seems vanilla spying or vanilla state backed industrial espionage
- WFHRenaissance 5y ago> Government employees are only human after all This weekend I was traveling and I put the stray $20 from my pocket in the bin at the TSA checkpoint. An agent quickly pulled it out and handed it back to me. He then said "a lot of good people work here, but they're still human". It's kind of wild that we endure that level of complacency here in the States.
- Iwan-Zotow 5y ago"Hello, dog!" Said tail
- tdhz77 5y agoNSA backdoors the peg spyware and Apple believes State Department has been hacked when in reality the information return has been manipulated. State Actors believe the information they received is legit, when it’s actually what the US wants them to see. This is common knowledge that CIA had hands into the development of Pegasus. The media hasn’t been able to keep up yet.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoSanction them then. The US has sanctioned companies for much less.
- azernik 5y agoThey did. "A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department's recent decision to place the Israeli company on an entity list, making it harder for U.S. companies to do business with them. NSO Group and another spyware firm were "added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month."
- savant_penguin 5y agoNow it's going to be really funny if later on we find out that that company was funded with Israeli state money that came from the US
- mjamil 5y agoIs anyone working on a microkernel design for privacy-sensitive devices (like phones) that would prevent outright this class of kernel-level arbitrary code execution exploits? We're stuck with iOS and Android for the foreseeable future, but is there hope that we'll get this right some day? Actually, would a microkernel design even be sufficient? Given that hackers exploit deserialization, memory safety, and variable type confusion issues, there's still plenty of avenues for data corruption and data leakage.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y agoI don't know why anyone would even bother to suggest such a thing when there's a second, completely-independent, unobservable computer running on every phone, with ring -1 access. Until we get rid of those, phones will continue to be the IDEAL surveillance tool for state-level actors. It's like the old saying about security: If you have access to the hardware, all bets are off. In our phones, the cell companies already have hardware-level access. It's almost like the government had a hand in developing the cell phone technology stack to make it so easy to use in this capacity... (Seriously, they did, but I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of finding links.)
- bri3d 5y agoMany of the kernel issues exploited in iOS are caused indirectly by its microkernel architecture, namely, the use of "ports" for kernel to kernel and kernel to user land IPC. For example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=2107&q=MACH_SEND_SYNC_OVERRIDE&can=1 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=21... . Microkernel vs monolithic kernel has little to do with this, IMO. The main issues are asynchronous complexity and memory safety. Also, a lot of your most sensitive data lives in userland. If someone gets access to the iMessage sandbox and the message database files, that's your most sensitive and privileged data gone, no kernel touched.
- stefan_ 5y agoAnd the userland is the worst possible combination of technology imaginable for this purpose - a memory unsafe language with a ton of magic dynamic features. You get the horrible serialization issues from Java & Ruby with the same old heap, stack and integer overflows we've come to love in C and mix in some of the runtime control flow from C++.
- christophilus 5y agoWell, that wasn't predictable at all. In all seriousness, I hope this finally prompts our agencies to push for stronger security and better encryption rather than fighting it as they have for so long.
- afterburner 5y agoThis was entirely predictable.
- kyahsworld 5y agoI have credit card data information + MSR HID + but i dont know how to read or do the code metric etc in order to retrieve track 1 or 2
- jimnotgym 5y agoTlDr. Weapons designed to use against baddies can also be used against goodies
- illusivesaint 5y agoWow, Israeli's spying on their main sponsor?? Espionage is part of the political territory but hopefully this sets precedent to a change of optics. (Which probably not since Russia does it boldly for fun at this point).
- amitport 5y agoNobody claimed in the article that this is a case of Israel spying on the US. That would be quite a jump.
- cascom 5y agoBut it’s only one or two steps removed = Israeli company, acting with the approval and protection of the Israeli state, enabled and facilitated spying on the US by a third party.
- amitport 5y agoThe world is only one or two steps removed. Israel is acting under the approval and protection of the US ==> US was spying on itself /s
- azernik 5y agoThere's a big, big difference between acting against your ally, and irresponsibly proliferating technology that's used against them. cf. France's Exocet sales and the Falklands, though much lower impact this time.
- turings 5y agoI would not be surprised if it's an Israeli company behind using NSO to steal it. There's Lusha too and it's stealing info in plain sight. It's basically stealing information and completely violating any GDPR or Californian law. Here is a good spiel of the whole thing tying their founder to all the apps that steal information: https://wwws.nightwatchcybersecurity.com/2020/02/20/another-tale-of-personal-data-harvesting-alsid-lusha-co-and-simpler-apps/ https://wwws.nightwatchcybersecurity.com/2020/02/20/another-... And they just raised $200M to continue spying. The investors probably have no clue https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/10/lusha-a-crowdsourced-data-platform-for-b2b-sales-gets-205m-series-b-at-1-5b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/10/lusha-a-crowdsourced-data-... If we don't penalize crap like this, you encourage. And then it booms somewhere else.
- entom 5y agoHoly shit! How's Simple Apps stuff not shutdown by GDPR? Either Simpler App is lying (thus GDPR kicks in) or Lusha. This is insane
- jimmydoreornot 5y agoPoetic justice.
- Goety 5y agowhy are they just targeting the israeli firm?
- freeflight 5y agoIf this was a Russian/Iranian/Chinese company, we'd already have a news conference by the US DoS, declaring sanctions, freezing assets, and calling for an international coalition to contain the rogue state that's threatening world peace. But this is a Israeli company, so it's just another "scandal" that scrolls trough the news feed, it will be forgotten by next week, to be completely memory holed by next year.
- sizzle 5y agoCan you explain why that is for us who aren’t well versed in geopolitical issues.
- spiznnx 5y agoIsrael is an ally of the United States.
- wyager 5y agoMany in power even go so far as to refer to Israel as the US's "greatest ally". https://zeldin.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/standing-our-greatest-ally-israel https://zeldin.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/standin... https://www.toomey.senate.gov/about/issues/israel-and-the-middle-east https://www.toomey.senate.gov/about/issues/israel-and-the-mi... https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-israel/ https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-israel/
- technobabbler 5y ago"Ally" is probably too weak a word for the relationship we have with Israel. Probably no other country has this much influence on our politics. Not even the UK or Canada, who we share close cultural and linguistic bonds with. Israel is like the Taiwan of the Middle East, meaning it's a useful partner to us in terms of maintaining a separation between the West and some perceived enemy (Muslims in this case, the Chinese in the case of Taiwan). But they also cause us to have more enemies than we otherwise would. In an open letter, Bin Laden specifically called out our support for Israel as one of their justifications behind 9/11. Spying between allies is a relatively normal thing, but when someone screws up and lets the public see it happen, usually there is at least some mild chiding. Israel doesn't even get that tsk tsk because of how much influence they have. Also, Israel has a very effective propaganda machine that purposely tries to paint any criticism of Israeli policy as anti-semitism. It's hard for our politicians to openly discuss them without risking their ire, and that of many influential Jewish Americans, and the powerful AIPAC lobby. Frankly, Israel has us by the balls. Less an ally and more a dominatrix.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoIt was always only a matter of time untill this snakes starts eating itself. News talking heads should be interviewing thousands of experts who can say "I told you so" and asking some tough questions of our joker officials.
- nomadiccoder 5y agoWhat are the metrics of cryptographers by country?
- ryanbytes 5y agoBut our greatest ally?
- alexnewman 5y agoJFK was killed by a magical bullet
- azifali 5y agoNSO should be declared a terrorist organization and enemy combatant.