57 ms·

iPhone flaw exploited by second Israeli spy firm

503 points by caaqil 5y ago

temptemptemp111 5y ago
gostsamo 5y ago
What are the chances that they bought the vulnerability from the same place? Finding something like that at the same time if it was there for awhile is rather suspect.
- kryptiskt 5y ago
  It could be reverse-engineered too if they got their hand on an exploited phone, but these firms don't seem to offer any defensive cybersecurity services. It seems to me that would be a great synergy, if they can scoop up exploits used against the customers they are defending, they could then use those exploits in their offensive products.
  - not2b 5y ago
    It's even possible that one of the companies was spying on the other one.
someotherperson 5y ago
Pretty sure this was known since last year[0], although it may be slightly different. The smaller firms are just alphabet soup remixes of the larger ones. I wouldn't be surprised if they have the same owners, same staff, same offices -- just with a different logo at the top of a second set of business cards. [0] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-the-secret-israeli-cyber-firm-selling-spy-tech-to-saudia-arabia-1.9884403 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium.HIGHL...
- mzs 5y ago
  Nice find, maybe there's something here to how KSA was allowed to continue spying using this tech: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/magazine/nso-group-israel-spyware.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/magazine/nso-group-israel... > Years prior, NSO had formed an ethics committee, made up of a bipartisan cast of former U.S. foreign-policy officials who would advise on potential customers. After the Khashoggi killing in 2018, its members requested an urgent meeting to address the stories circulating about NSO involvement. Hulio flatly denied that Pegasus had been used to spy on the Washington Post columnist. Pegasus systems log every attack in case there is a complaint, and — with the client’s permission — NSO can perform an after-the-fact forensic analysis. Hulio said his staff had done just that with the Saudi logs and found no use of any NSO product or technology against Khashoggi. The committee nonetheless urged NSO to shut off the Pegasus system in Saudi Arabia, and it did. The committee also advised NSO to reject a subsequent request by the Israeli government to reconnect the hacking system in Saudi Arabia, and it stayed off. > Then, the following year, the company reversed course. Novalpina, a British private-equity firm, acting in cooperation with Hulio, purchased Francisco Partners’ shares of NSO, with a valuation of $1 billion — more than five times more than it was when the American fund acquired it in 2014. In early 2019, NSO agreed to turn the Pegasus system in Saudi Arabia back on. > Keeping the Saudis happy was important for Netanyahu, who was in the middle of a secret diplomatic initiative he believed would cement his legacy as a statesman — an official rapprochement between Israel and several Arab states. In September 2020, Netanyahu, Donald Trump and the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords, and all the signatories heralded it as a new era of peace for the region. > But behind the scenes of the peace deal was a Middle East weapons bazaar. The Trump administration had quietly agreed to overturn past American policy and sell F-35 joint strike fighters and armed Reaper drones to the U.A.E., and had spent weeks assuaging Israel’s concerns that it would no longer be the only country in the region with the sophisticated F-35. Pompeo would later describe the aircraft deals in an interview as “critical” to obtaining M.B.Z.’s consent to the historic move. And by the time the Abraham Accords were announced, Israel had provided licenses to sell Pegasus to nearly all the signatories. > Things hit a snag a month later, when the Saudi export license expired. Now it was up to the Israeli Defense Ministry to decide whether or not to renew it. Citing Saudi Arabia’s abuse of Pegasus, it declined to do so. Without the license, NSO could not provide routine maintenance on the software, and the systems were crashing. Numerous calls among Prince Mohammed’s aides, NSO executives, the Mossad and the Israeli Defense Ministry had failed to resolve the issue. So the crown prince placed an urgent telephone call to Netanyahu, according to people familiar with the call. He wanted the Saudi license for Pegasus renewed. > Prince Mohammed had a significant amount of leverage. His ailing father, King Salman, had not officially signed on to the Abraham Accords, but he offered the other signatories his tacit blessing. He also allowed for a crucial part of the agreement to move forward: the use of Saudi air space, for the first time ever, by Israeli planes flying eastward on their way to the Persian Gulf. If the Saudis were to change their mind about the use of their airspace, an important public component of the accords might collapse. > Netanyahu apparently had not been updated on the brewing crisis, but after the conversation with Prince Mohammed his office immediately ordered the Defense Ministry to have the problem fixed. That night, a ministry official called NSO’s operations room to have the Saudi systems switched back on, but the NSO compliance officer on duty rebuffed the request without a signed license. Told that the orders came directly from Netanyahu, the NSO employee agreed to accept an email from the Defense Ministry. Shortly afterward, Pegasus in Saudi Arabia was once again up and running. > The next morning, a courier from the Defense Ministry arrived at NSO headquarters delivering a stamped and sealed permit.
58x14 5y ago
This is unsurprising; the number of individual exploits needed to chain together into a functioning compromise often requires a lot of joint effort. It's funny this release comes out at the same time as the FBI's disclosure that they "tested" (aka purchased) Pegasus, NSO group's packaged exploit software. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-says-it-tested-israeli-company-nso-groups-spyware-2022-02-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-says-it-tested-israeli-...
- usmcnapier 5y ago
  It only figures. They do pretty good coverage on it at all at forbiddenstories.org
ProAm 5y ago
- teejmya 5y ago
  The closed ecosystem prevents this exploit from ending up on the public App Store and infecting devices en mass...
  - moonchrome 5y ago
    Umm if it's zero click why would it need to get on the App Store ? And what does getting something on App Store have to do with the system being open or closed ?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    The App Store is not the delivery mechanism for this attack, so no.
    - nomel 5y ago
      I think the argument is that having a completely open App Store would increase the attack surface, since the average user will click any install icon.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        I think the greater argument to be made is that it doesn't matter, since iOS has had no-click zero-days for longer than it's had an App Store.
  - caddybox 5y ago
    What makes you feel that malicious apps are the only vector for these exploits. The web is open and iOS users can still download files on their devices. Let's disable file downloads altogether and limit people to an alternative "reviewed" web. Please don't use the flimsiest of excuses to bootstrap an argument for a more restrictive world.
dc-programmer 5y ago
This is getting out of hand. Now there are two them!
- paulis 5y ago
  Haha, took me a minute to remember the reference. Great stuff!
  - a4isms 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrYV7wS3JUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrYV7wS3JUk
- YaBomm 5y ago
chezzwizz 5y ago
The only thing that I took from this was NSO Group, blacklisted for selling to foreign governments, demonstrated an iPhone exploit and another reason to stay awake in foreign countries. in related news: * https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/report-nso-offered-us-firm-bags-of-cash-for-help-spying-on-cellphone-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/report-nso-offer... * https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220121/13492148329/spying-begins-home-israels-government-used-nso-group-malware-to-surveill-own-citizens.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220121/13492148329/spyin...
gataca 5y ago
Why doesn't Apple just buy NSO and use them as an internal defense group?
- mathverse 5y ago
  Because it makes no sense. NSO is just one of the many companies doing offensive netsec.
  - core-utility 5y ago
    Not to mention, they're one of many public. One has to think that there are many more like NSO that don't have huge media publicity around them.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  How would that benefit Apple? They are already able to spy on their phone users if ordered by the right three letter agency, they don't need NSO/Pegasus for that. And if they still do so, it would basically be official: "look a phone vendor that develop tools to spy on phone usage". Not a good marketing either.
  - mwint 5y ago
    Apple would presumably fix the vulnerabilities, rather than exploit them themselves.
    - not2b 5y ago
      And the people at that company who enjoy developing attacks more than they enjoy defending against attacks would just leave and form a new company, that would then sell its attacks to the highest bidder.
      - iratewizard 5y ago
        Red team still develops attacks. They just do it directly for the blue team that fixes them.
keewee7 5y ago
>In Uganda, for example, NSO's ForcedEntry was used to spy on U.S. diplomats, Reuters reported. This was the incident that made US authorities go after NSO. I remember reading that these diplomats were actually involved in espionage.
- syoc 5y ago
  Not surprising as diplomat and spy is often interchangeable and there probably was a reason they were spied on.
  - optimalsolver 5y ago
    It's also a bit rich for the US to be complaining about this kind of thing.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      Come on everyone spies. There’s no point in establishing an embassy if you’re not also getting an understanding of both stated and unstated intentions.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        That's not the issue. The issue is the US getting mad at counter-espionage by Uganda while they are themselves engaging in espionage. It's very hypocritical.
        cgriswald 5y ago
        It is the issue. Everybody spies. Everybody spies and is hypocritical about it.
        pieter_mj 5y ago
        But USA is the most hypocritical about it. It systematically spies on its allies, with the exception of Israel and these 2 countries take active measures for some cybertools not to spy on each other. (or Israel tries to make it seem that way).
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations? If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace and since we basically fund them and let them spy on us anyway, just make sure their database is open to us? Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust? There are a lot of stories from my childhood (of debatable ranking on the conspiracy scale) of the dirty pool and awful unconstitutional behavior by the CIA and other agencies. It is my vague impression that the increased information awareness from the web tempered the bad behavior for a couple decades, but I think the old habits will start reappearing in "cyberspace" once they gain sufficient deniability, and people's live reach a level of "mortal" dependence on it.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  Perhaps. But perhaps news outlets are singling out Israel for whatever reason. So i feel quite uncertain.
  - bitcharmer 5y ago
    I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      Criticizing Israel is a big no-no when it comes to certain issues, but I’m not sure it’s the case here. In this case they seem to be an easy foil to place the blame upon, when other governments are either doing the same thing or are collaborating with Israel to export the development.
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      I always try and work with the assumption that the media is lying to me. Mainly by omission. These things are owned by private people and/or are run by people with agendas. There has to be limits to their trustworthiness. I salt every news story that gets served up to me.
mcoliver 5y ago
For those who are just being exposed to this stuff, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth was an entertaining read that covers some of the history in this space.
- jrm4 5y ago
  My most shocking takeaway from this book was certainly discovering the extent to which GOOGLE relied on outsourcing security. Google. Outsources. Security. The kind of thing that makes it seem miraculous that any of it is still standing.
  - ma2rten 5y ago
    Google certainly does a lot of security in house.
    - bhedgeoser 5y ago
      It also stores passwords in plain text. I once got an email from them sayingthat their crawlers found my password somewhere online.
      - hasty 5y ago
        That doesn't mean it's stored in plain text. They could be storing a nice hash, and then when the crawler finds your email and password on some site some where, it could try to hash it as if you were logging in and see if it matches.
        jart 5y ago
        Do you know how computationally expensive it is to hash passwords?
        hasty 5y ago
        It's computationally expensive to hash every single possible password, but given a proposed login/password combo, it's not expensive to check just the one. If Google, in crawling, finds a dump of several million accounts and their purported passwords, it's not a heavy lift to check each password.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I am not sure if it was already covered, but at this point one has to assume that every government that can obtain it, will[1]. I do find it odd however that FBI did given some of the more recent revelations about hacks against US using same software. [1]https://www.jpost.com/international/article-695290 https://www.jpost.com/international/article-695290
usui 5y ago
I had a thought after thinking about the publicity of this second exploit: If Facebook says iOS is causing $10B loss of revenue (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30190216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30190216) then it would be in their interest to hurt the public's opinion on iPhone privacy/security.
- rchaud 5y ago
  The general public worries about Instagram/Alexa listening to their conversations to presumably show them targeted ads. NSO spyware isn't on their radar, because they simply aren't important enough to be a target. For dissidents, journalists and diplomats on the other hand, it could be a death sentence.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Apple has many competitors and others they deal with, who have many motives. Sans evidence, everything is speculation. Drawing a linefrom a potential motive to action is the stuff of fiction.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Trying to imagine what you're insinuating here is ridiculous, and probably why you said the quiet part out loud (and left the loud part unsaid).
smashah 5y ago
bogwog 5y ago
shmatt 5y ago
This is comical. Of course more than one person knows about each 0-day at NSO. Maybe they even brought it over from a different place. And they can forward it (for money or ego) to 1000 other people. There truly is no limit, once someone has committed the idea to anyone but themselves NSO (and the smaller, anonymous companies) are famous for bringing in people from Israeli NSA (8200) or Mossad. Why? They're not just smart, they also have a bank of 0-days in their brains. Even if they're not bringing over actual code, they remember all of the 0-days they were exposed to. There is no way to stop them from "uploading" their knowledge to a new company with a 7 figure compensation package At some point the UAE figured this out, and Dark Matter opened an office in Cyprus. Offering ex-8200 7 figures (in $) to come build cyber weapons for them, limiting their dependency on NSO and export licenses[1]. The Israeli Govt. was furious but it wasn't illegal to move abroad and work for a foreign country [1]https://www.themarker.com/technation/.premium-1.7972249 https://www.themarker.com/technation/.premium-1.7972249 - requires translation to english
- golergka 5y ago
  > NSO (and the smaller, anonymous companies) are famous for bringing in people from Israeli NSA (8200) or Mossad. Literally every tech company in Israel has people from 8200. I worked at a few mobile game companies, and each had 22 year old kids straight from the 8200.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    also worth stating that Israel has compulsory military service, so a huge number of computer geeks, like you and me, will get into this service for the mandated time rather than the more physical and distasteful alternatives. It's (i imagine) like an enforced first year MIT cyber security course for the majority of people in that service. In summary, the label of belonging to them means not that much in reality - rather one should look at length of service, age of entry and any subsequent / previous activities when they leave. (basically like any other cybersecurity job, really)
  - shmatt 5y ago
    true, and 8200 is huge, being there doesn't mean much in terms of ability to remotely take over an iPhone The more accurate description is - these cyber weapon companies bring in the 22 year olds that were building cyber weapons in 8200 Its an elite group of a couple hundred at most. who are then snatched up for their existing knowledge, even if they can't figure out how to find new exploits
rootsudo 5y ago
Question: If device is jailbroken, and you apply root limit and other things to break standard features. Would it make it harder to exploit an ios? I would imagine you can do default hardening like modifying the software version label so when the software queries it will be unable to automatically "arm" itself and apply persistence. Are there any packages/places where this is already discussed? If not, then I guess I will pick up some older iphone devices and play along - because it seems to be a great point - I highly doubt there is much sophistication in these malwares and there has to be some sanity checks that make it so that if you are targetted it will not "reveal" itself. And of course the basic one of VPN, and forcing to change the DNS servers which the ios devices operates on.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Any kind of defense would be by chance. You aren't realistically able to "harden" the OS against attacks better than Apple can. Maybe you might be able to confuse some attacks but this would still be basically random luck.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thunderbong 5y ago
https://archive.md/UGmhy https://archive.md/UGmhy

503 points by caaqil 5y ago

What are the chances that they bought the vulnerability from the same place? Finding something like that at the same time if it was there for awhile is rather suspect.

kryptiskt 5y ago
It could be reverse-engineered too if they got their hand on an exploited phone, but these firms don't seem to offer any defensive cybersecurity services. It seems to me that would be a great synergy, if they can scoop up exploits used against the customers they are defending, they could then use those exploits in their offensive products.
- not2b 5y ago
  It's even possible that one of the companies was spying on the other one.

someotherperson 5y ago

Pretty sure this was known since last year[0], although it may be slightly different. The smaller firms are just alphabet soup remixes of the larger ones. I wouldn't be surprised if they have the same owners, same staff, same offices -- just with a different logo at the top of a second set of business cards. [0] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-the-secret-israeli-cyber-firm-selling-spy-tech-to-saudia-arabia-1.9884403 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium.HIGHL...

mzs 5y ago
Nice find, maybe there's something here to how KSA was allowed to continue spying using this tech: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/magazine/nso-group-israel-spyware.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/magazine/nso-group-israel... > Years prior, NSO had formed an ethics committee, made up of a bipartisan cast of former U.S. foreign-policy officials who would advise on potential customers. After the Khashoggi killing in 2018, its members requested an urgent meeting to address the stories circulating about NSO involvement. Hulio flatly denied that Pegasus had been used to spy on the Washington Post columnist. Pegasus systems log every attack in case there is a complaint, and — with the client’s permission — NSO can perform an after-the-fact forensic analysis. Hulio said his staff had done just that with the Saudi logs and found no use of any NSO product or technology against Khashoggi. The committee nonetheless urged NSO to shut off the Pegasus system in Saudi Arabia, and it did. The committee also advised NSO to reject a subsequent request by the Israeli government to reconnect the hacking system in Saudi Arabia, and it stayed off. > Then, the following year, the company reversed course. Novalpina, a British private-equity firm, acting in cooperation with Hulio, purchased Francisco Partners’ shares of NSO, with a valuation of $1 billion — more than five times more than it was when the American fund acquired it in 2014. In early 2019, NSO agreed to turn the Pegasus system in Saudi Arabia back on. > Keeping the Saudis happy was important for Netanyahu, who was in the middle of a secret diplomatic initiative he believed would cement his legacy as a statesman — an official rapprochement between Israel and several Arab states. In September 2020, Netanyahu, Donald Trump and the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords, and all the signatories heralded it as a new era of peace for the region. > But behind the scenes of the peace deal was a Middle East weapons bazaar. The Trump administration had quietly agreed to overturn past American policy and sell F-35 joint strike fighters and armed Reaper drones to the U.A.E., and had spent weeks assuaging Israel’s concerns that it would no longer be the only country in the region with the sophisticated F-35. Pompeo would later describe the aircraft deals in an interview as “critical” to obtaining M.B.Z.’s consent to the historic move. And by the time the Abraham Accords were announced, Israel had provided licenses to sell Pegasus to nearly all the signatories. > Things hit a snag a month later, when the Saudi export license expired. Now it was up to the Israeli Defense Ministry to decide whether or not to renew it. Citing Saudi Arabia’s abuse of Pegasus, it declined to do so. Without the license, NSO could not provide routine maintenance on the software, and the systems were crashing. Numerous calls among Prince Mohammed’s aides, NSO executives, the Mossad and the Israeli Defense Ministry had failed to resolve the issue. So the crown prince placed an urgent telephone call to Netanyahu, according to people familiar with the call. He wanted the Saudi license for Pegasus renewed. > Prince Mohammed had a significant amount of leverage. His ailing father, King Salman, had not officially signed on to the Abraham Accords, but he offered the other signatories his tacit blessing. He also allowed for a crucial part of the agreement to move forward: the use of Saudi air space, for the first time ever, by Israeli planes flying eastward on their way to the Persian Gulf. If the Saudis were to change their mind about the use of their airspace, an important public component of the accords might collapse. > Netanyahu apparently had not been updated on the brewing crisis, but after the conversation with Prince Mohammed his office immediately ordered the Defense Ministry to have the problem fixed. That night, a ministry official called NSO’s operations room to have the Saudi systems switched back on, but the NSO compliance officer on duty rebuffed the request without a signed license. Told that the orders came directly from Netanyahu, the NSO employee agreed to accept an email from the Defense Ministry. Shortly afterward, Pegasus in Saudi Arabia was once again up and running. > The next morning, a courier from the Defense Ministry arrived at NSO headquarters delivering a stamped and sealed permit.

58x14 5y ago

This is unsurprising; the number of individual exploits needed to chain together into a functioning compromise often requires a lot of joint effort. It's funny this release comes out at the same time as the FBI's disclosure that they "tested" (aka purchased) Pegasus, NSO group's packaged exploit software. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-says-it-tested-israeli-company-nso-groups-spyware-2022-02-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-says-it-tested-israeli-...

usmcnapier 5y ago
It only figures. They do pretty good coverage on it at all at forbiddenstories.org

ProAm 5y ago

teejmya 5y ago
The closed ecosystem prevents this exploit from ending up on the public App Store and infecting devices en mass...
- moonchrome 5y ago
  Umm if it's zero click why would it need to get on the App Store ? And what does getting something on App Store have to do with the system being open or closed ?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- smoldesu 5y ago
  The App Store is not the delivery mechanism for this attack, so no.
  - nomel 5y ago
    I think the argument is that having a completely open App Store would increase the attack surface, since the average user will click any install icon.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I think the greater argument to be made is that it doesn't matter, since iOS has had no-click zero-days for longer than it's had an App Store.
- caddybox 5y ago
  What makes you feel that malicious apps are the only vector for these exploits. The web is open and iOS users can still download files on their devices. Let's disable file downloads altogether and limit people to an alternative "reviewed" web. Please don't use the flimsiest of excuses to bootstrap an argument for a more restrictive world.

dc-programmer 5y ago

This is getting out of hand. Now there are two them!

paulis 5y ago
Haha, took me a minute to remember the reference. Great stuff!
- a4isms 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrYV7wS3JUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrYV7wS3JUk
YaBomm 5y ago

chezzwizz 5y ago

The only thing that I took from this was NSO Group, blacklisted for selling to foreign governments, demonstrated an iPhone exploit and another reason to stay awake in foreign countries. in related news: * https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/report-nso-offered-us-firm-bags-of-cash-for-help-spying-on-cellphone-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/report-nso-offer... * https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220121/13492148329/spying-begins-home-israels-government-used-nso-group-malware-to-surveill-own-citizens.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220121/13492148329/spyin...

gataca 5y ago

Why doesn't Apple just buy NSO and use them as an internal defense group?

mathverse 5y ago
Because it makes no sense. NSO is just one of the many companies doing offensive netsec.
- core-utility 5y ago
  Not to mention, they're one of many public. One has to think that there are many more like NSO that don't have huge media publicity around them.
tut-urut-utut 5y ago
How would that benefit Apple? They are already able to spy on their phone users if ordered by the right three letter agency, they don't need NSO/Pegasus for that. And if they still do so, it would basically be official: "look a phone vendor that develop tools to spy on phone usage". Not a good marketing either.
- mwint 5y ago
  Apple would presumably fix the vulnerabilities, rather than exploit them themselves.
  - not2b 5y ago
    And the people at that company who enjoy developing attacks more than they enjoy defending against attacks would just leave and form a new company, that would then sell its attacks to the highest bidder.
    - iratewizard 5y ago
      Red team still develops attacks. They just do it directly for the blue team that fixes them.

keewee7 5y ago

>In Uganda, for example, NSO's ForcedEntry was used to spy on U.S. diplomats, Reuters reported. This was the incident that made US authorities go after NSO. I remember reading that these diplomats were actually involved in espionage.

syoc 5y ago
Not surprising as diplomat and spy is often interchangeable and there probably was a reason they were spied on.
- optimalsolver 5y ago
  It's also a bit rich for the US to be complaining about this kind of thing.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    Come on everyone spies. There’s no point in establishing an embassy if you’re not also getting an understanding of both stated and unstated intentions.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      That's not the issue. The issue is the US getting mad at counter-espionage by Uganda while they are themselves engaging in espionage. It's very hypocritical.
      - cgriswald 5y ago
        It is the issue. Everybody spies. Everybody spies and is hypocritical about it.
        pieter_mj 5y ago
        But USA is the most hypocritical about it. It systematically spies on its allies, with the exception of Israel and these 2 countries take active measures for some cybertools not to spy on each other. (or Israel tries to make it seem that way).

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations? If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace and since we basically fund them and let them spy on us anyway, just make sure their database is open to us? Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust? There are a lot of stories from my childhood (of debatable ranking on the conspiracy scale) of the dirty pool and awful unconstitutional behavior by the CIA and other agencies. It is my vague impression that the increased information awareness from the web tempered the bad behavior for a couple decades, but I think the old habits will start reappearing in "cyberspace" once they gain sufficient deniability, and people's live reach a level of "mortal" dependence on it.

FridayoLeary 5y ago
Perhaps. But perhaps news outlets are singling out Israel for whatever reason. So i feel quite uncertain.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    Criticizing Israel is a big no-no when it comes to certain issues, but I’m not sure it’s the case here. In this case they seem to be an easy foil to place the blame upon, when other governments are either doing the same thing or are collaborating with Israel to export the development.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    I always try and work with the assumption that the media is lying to me. Mainly by omission. These things are owned by private people and/or are run by people with agendas. There has to be limits to their trustworthiness. I salt every news story that gets served up to me.

mcoliver 5y ago

For those who are just being exposed to this stuff, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth was an entertaining read that covers some of the history in this space.

jrm4 5y ago
My most shocking takeaway from this book was certainly discovering the extent to which GOOGLE relied on outsourcing security. Google. Outsources. Security. The kind of thing that makes it seem miraculous that any of it is still standing.
- ma2rten 5y ago
  Google certainly does a lot of security in house.
  - bhedgeoser 5y ago
    It also stores passwords in plain text. I once got an email from them sayingthat their crawlers found my password somewhere online.
    - hasty 5y ago
      That doesn't mean it's stored in plain text. They could be storing a nice hash, and then when the crawler finds your email and password on some site some where, it could try to hash it as if you were logging in and see if it matches.
      - jart 5y ago
        Do you know how computationally expensive it is to hash passwords?
        hasty 5y ago
        It's computationally expensive to hash every single possible password, but given a proposed login/password combo, it's not expensive to check just the one. If Google, in crawling, finds a dump of several million accounts and their purported passwords, it's not a heavy lift to check each password.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I am not sure if it was already covered, but at this point one has to assume that every government that can obtain it, will[1]. I do find it odd however that FBI did given some of the more recent revelations about hacks against US using same software. [1]https://www.jpost.com/international/article-695290 https://www.jpost.com/international/article-695290

usui 5y ago

I had a thought after thinking about the publicity of this second exploit: If Facebook says iOS is causing $10B loss of revenue (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30190216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30190216) then it would be in their interest to hurt the public's opinion on iPhone privacy/security.

rchaud 5y ago
The general public worries about Instagram/Alexa listening to their conversations to presumably show them targeted ads. NSO spyware isn't on their radar, because they simply aren't important enough to be a target. For dissidents, journalists and diplomats on the other hand, it could be a death sentence.
wolverine876 5y ago
Apple has many competitors and others they deal with, who have many motives. Sans evidence, everything is speculation. Drawing a linefrom a potential motive to action is the stuff of fiction.
smoldesu 5y ago
Trying to imagine what you're insinuating here is ridiculous, and probably why you said the quiet part out loud (and left the loud part unsaid).

smashah 5y ago

bogwog 5y ago

shmatt 5y ago

This is comical. Of course more than one person knows about each 0-day at NSO. Maybe they even brought it over from a different place. And they can forward it (for money or ego) to 1000 other people. There truly is no limit, once someone has committed the idea to anyone but themselves NSO (and the smaller, anonymous companies) are famous for bringing in people from Israeli NSA (8200) or Mossad. Why? They're not just smart, they also have a bank of 0-days in their brains. Even if they're not bringing over actual code, they remember all of the 0-days they were exposed to. There is no way to stop them from "uploading" their knowledge to a new company with a 7 figure compensation package At some point the UAE figured this out, and Dark Matter opened an office in Cyprus. Offering ex-8200 7 figures (in $) to come build cyber weapons for them, limiting their dependency on NSO and export licenses[1]. The Israeli Govt. was furious but it wasn't illegal to move abroad and work for a foreign country [1]https://www.themarker.com/technation/.premium-1.7972249 https://www.themarker.com/technation/.premium-1.7972249 - requires translation to english

golergka 5y ago
> NSO (and the smaller, anonymous companies) are famous for bringing in people from Israeli NSA (8200) or Mossad. Literally every tech company in Israel has people from 8200. I worked at a few mobile game companies, and each had 22 year old kids straight from the 8200.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  also worth stating that Israel has compulsory military service, so a huge number of computer geeks, like you and me, will get into this service for the mandated time rather than the more physical and distasteful alternatives. It's (i imagine) like an enforced first year MIT cyber security course for the majority of people in that service. In summary, the label of belonging to them means not that much in reality - rather one should look at length of service, age of entry and any subsequent / previous activities when they leave. (basically like any other cybersecurity job, really)
- shmatt 5y ago
  true, and 8200 is huge, being there doesn't mean much in terms of ability to remotely take over an iPhone The more accurate description is - these cyber weapon companies bring in the 22 year olds that were building cyber weapons in 8200 Its an elite group of a couple hundred at most. who are then snatched up for their existing knowledge, even if they can't figure out how to find new exploits

rootsudo 5y ago

Question: If device is jailbroken, and you apply root limit and other things to break standard features. Would it make it harder to exploit an ios? I would imagine you can do default hardening like modifying the software version label so when the software queries it will be unable to automatically "arm" itself and apply persistence. Are there any packages/places where this is already discussed? If not, then I guess I will pick up some older iphone devices and play along - because it seems to be a great point - I highly doubt there is much sophistication in these malwares and there has to be some sanity checks that make it so that if you are targetted it will not "reveal" itself. And of course the basic one of VPN, and forcing to change the DNS servers which the ios devices operates on.

Gigachad 5y ago
Any kind of defense would be by chance. You aren't realistically able to "harden" the OS against attacks better than Apple can. Maybe you might be able to confuse some attacks but this would still be basically random luck.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thunderbong 5y ago

https://archive.md/UGmhy https://archive.md/UGmhy