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Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in WANA
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoAnyone know why it's always Israel with the mobile spyware?
- orisho 1y agoIt's not just Israel. It's just not newsworthy if it's not Israel.
- andy99 1y agoSomehow "invasive Mountain View bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in the US" doesn't get the same attention.
- amarcheschi 1y agoI routinely see posts of various shitfuckeries in the home page of hn, mostly from big tech or other companies
- dundarious 1y agoIt certainly has a valence if you're in Gaza, etc., and this software is typically found in phones in the region.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoWhich EU countries are comparable in militarized mobile spyware?
- fakedang 1y agoEx Mossad, Shin Bet and Aman guys going into the private sector. In other countries, intelligence services people usually stay around for the long run. In Israel, most do it for a few years before moving to the private sector, and taking those talents with them. It's also the case with Russia and China - there's just more money for these guys in the private sector, while national service ensures they don't get treated any more exceptionally and obtain very little benefit for staying on.
- fancyfredbot 1y agoNSO group are a particularly successful Israeli spyware company, but there are others. For example Pars is Turkish.
- markus_zhang 1y agoNot sure, but they are really important in the Ads scene (yeah those ads). You got Ironsource and Applovin, both from IL. I think they are pretty talented in these things.
- kmeisthax 1y agoIt's not, but you hear about them more often because they're America's attack dog. AFAIK China has their own mobile spyware too, and the US has several private companies that make spyware too. Smartphones are juicy targets. Most people have one, originally by choice and now by social mandate. And people have a habit of loading lots of personal data on them - at a minimum, just by using the location features on the device, which produces a near-perfect location tracking log. Lots of governments would love nothing more than to have access to telepathy - i.e. actual mind reading - to figure out which citizens were loyal, disloyal, engaged in criminal behavior, etc. And having a full unencrypted phone backup is basically a mind rip. The only countries that aren't interested in mobile spyware are countries not big enough to afford a spyware engineering org.
- Barrin92 1y agoyou know what they said about Prussia, it's a military that happens to have a country attached to it, Israel is sort of like that but with an internet connection
- sReinwald 1y agoIt's not always, but Israel is uniquely positioned for tech companies of this kind thanks to Unit 8200. Israel has mandatory military service. They grab the most promising teenagers and give them insanely good cybersecurity training on the government's dime. They do their mandatory service, maybe spend a few more years in the unit, then move on to the private sector. Most, if not all, of Israel's tech companies in the cybersecurity/surveillance sector are related to Unit 8200 for this reason. But also: I think it's fair to say that Israeli spyware gets more media attention party because of geopolitical factors. Similar to Russian or Chinese spyware. I doubt the same headline would catch as much attention if you swapped Israeli-founded with Spanish-founded.
- bigyabai 1y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20250920032034/https://smex.org/invasive-israeli-software-is-harvesting-data-from-samsung-users-in-wana/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250920032034/https://smex.org/...
- andy99 1y agoThis is from February And the "Israeli founded" serves what purpose?
- barney54 1y ago[flagged]
- dismalaf 1y ago> And the "Israeli founded" serves what purpose? Stir up hate. Feed into conspiracy theories. Click bait. Etc...
- andy99 1y agoYes my question was rhetorical, you can see how such suggestions get treated.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- LightBug1 1y ago[flagged]
- CLPadvocate 1y ago[flagged]
- LightBug1 1y agoIf you read that back to yourself, you'll understand (I hope) your logical failure and pitiful whataboutism. My condolences regarding your predicament.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- like_any_other 1y ago
- ddxv 1y agoThe company that has the most reach in mobile spyware is AppsFlyer which is Israeli owned and as yet a private company. They operate in a closed space called mobile attribution of which only a few companies are competitors. Appsflyer is by far the largest. https://appgoblin.info/companies/types/ad-attribution https://appgoblin.info/companies/types/ad-attribution They are probably in 20 or more apps on your phone. https://appgoblin.com/companies/appsflyer.com https://appgoblin.com/companies/appsflyer.com
- markus_zhang 1y agoEvery app uses Appsflyer. I worked for multiple companies and somehow they all use it. Kinda the standard in the industry. Better drop back to a dumb phone TBH.
- M95D 1y agoNo phone is dumb internally anymore. Only the UI may make it look like a dumb phone.
- markus_zhang 1y agoWhat about an old Nokia phone? I think that still stands as a true dumb phone, but yeah it's difficult to find a SIM card that fits there, though.
- M95D 1y agoThere's no 4G old Nokia that I know of. I've been using a N86 for the last 10 years. It's a true ship of Theseus - no part of it is from the original phone. The problem I have is that the 3G networks are all gone and the very few remaining 2G networks that are kept alive for GSM trackers won't provide internet access (at least, no more than a couple of KB per connection, as that's the most GSM trackers use). Not that I need internet much on the phone... but sometimes I need email (ProfiMail) and weather (ForecaWeather - yes, the servers are still alive today!). When the last 2G network goes out I'll be forced to change it and I have no alternatives. There are SIM size adapters.
- aeon_ai 1y agoIsraeli-founded very much buries the lede of US owned (ironSource/Unity).
- dang 1y agoA more recent article was discussed here: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44334167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44334167 - June 2025 (480 comments)
- OutOfHere 1y agoI figure Samsung too is fully on the do-not-use list now after all.