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Spyware maker NSO Group confirms acquisition by US investors
- sofixa 1y ago> After sending the messages, Hershowitz declared his comments “off the record,” which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance. TechCrunch is publishing the responses as there was no agreement made What a failure for a spokesperson.
- steventhedev 1y agoMore like a failure on TechCrunch. There is an implied agreement and violating it will result in a flat refusal to talk outside of prepared press releases. This isn't good journalism and should not be celebrated.
- calcifer 1y ago> There is an implied agreement The implied agreement is that everything is on the record unless explicitly agreed otherwise beforehand.
- saubeidl 1y agoOh, did the poor spyware maker get their expectation of privacy violated?
- terribleperson 1y agoThat's not how that works. You don't get to decide statements are off the record after you realize you said something that would look bad. Every interview would be a puff piece if that was how things worked.
- spankibalt 1y agoWell, that's how it works with the "Muckrakin's woke!1!!" crowd.
- porridgeraisin 1y agoThis will just stop people from talking to journos, like many have done. This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. If it's live, it's practically not possible so it's fine, but for articles I think that journos should respect retractions, regardless of whether it is post-hoc or pre-decided. Now, the "victim" here is NSO, so not expecting any sympathy, but journos do this to everyone, even normal people. > Puff pieces But with the aforementioned rhetoric in vogue these days, every piece of journo is a forced "scoop", leading to most of modern media(social and mainstream, the incentives are the same) being misconstrued non-factual brain damage. Even press conferences, most questions are just loaded and very bad-faith, basically trying to get you to say something they can quote out of context, or use for a misconstrued "non-truth", or a false equivalence. Or sometimes they just make things up! Retarded scoop-bait headlines as well. The root cause for all this is that adversarial rhetoric. Before you say "but the press is an adversary against the government", they do this to sportspersons, and a variety of other normal people too. If they only did this to the designated government spokesperson, it would be OK. Now, this rhetoric itself is a result of "news"[1] companies competing for audiences. A fairly obvious incentive there. On socials too. Engagement is rewarded, leading to the same thing. Furthermore, LLMs if used for content generation, will compete for audience, and even inference-time feedback driven optimisation leads to it giving the same reality-bending outputs. It's been simulated and shown in this stanford paper already: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105 [1] they really deserve the quotes these days
- calcifer 1y ago> This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. It's quite the opposite, actually. As Katherine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, used to say: News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising. TechCrunch is not obligated to let NSO's mouthpiece advertise on their pages.
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
- sigmar 1y agoRetroactively accepting comments to be off-the-record as a favor to a subject would be considered very bad journalism. This is not a new or unique circumstance.
- robotwizard 1y agoHaha, but it's crazy to go ahead and publish despite being told not to, by a company that can hack you with almost 100% certainty.
- sofixa 1y agoBut hacking TechCrunch would be a major PR disaster for NSO (again), so maybe they would abstain.
- seydor 1y agofitting, considering his job is to spy without consent
- sexeriy237 1y agoTime to start turning your networks off when not in use
- squarefoot 1y agoTime to get out of there, before they build walls to keep people inside.
- lifestyleguru 1y agoThe covid vaccination digital passports almost took off. People loved that it was in their smartphone.
- isodev 1y agoI always wondered how the software people who work in places like this live with themselves. Is it some sort of “enough money can make me forget and look myself in the mirror” situation?
- Y-bar 1y agoI guess it is like the scammers working in call centers and building RAT:s. They surely must have a level of sociopathy greater than the average person.
- isodev 1y agoThe scammers I can imagine. They’re more in the “thieves” category. Some break into houses, others trick people virtually. It’s not cool but I can imagine their motivation. The “develops weaponised software exploits” is not clear for me. Maybe it’s the same kind of mindset that lets people design and build weapons and bombs and such?
- bigyabai 1y agoThe money all spends the same. It's not too hard to visualize the type of person who could be coerced into thinking they work for the greater good.
- nucleogenesis 1y agoIt’s an Israeli company - they probably consider their work a matter of national security and get along just fine with that
- spankibalt 1y ago"What belongs together, comes together."
- p0w3n3d 1y agoInvestors: you must care of the planet, not emit any CO2 and not launder any money Also investors: let's invest in hacker business and break into all phones in the world
- smt88 1y agoThe first statement doesn’t sound like anything a professional investor would ever say
- stingraycharles 1y agoYou’re being downvoted but in the end I don’t believe in altruistic investors: in the end it’s about money. There’s a reason government need to hand out tax benefits for people to invest into eco-friendly companies.
- jpabrams 1y agoThe downvotes aren't due to the existence of altruistic investors, they're about lack of reading comprehension.
- swarnie 1y agoAre you sure? I feel like ESG has been rammed in to every company i've worked at for a couple of decades now.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoESG there is just for pandering, optics and virtue signaling, but they don't actually believe any of that.
- p0w3n3d 1y agoESG is what I've been referring to. There are also perks of investing in ESG compliant companies and scolding if one does not comply
- 1y ago
- saubeidl 1y agoThey are building the perfect surveillance state. In previous news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45441983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45441983 Americans, if you don't stand up now, you will have to relearn the lesson Germans had to learn eighty years ago.
- baobun 1y ago"Tens of millions" for controlling stake in NSO is like an order of magnitude less than what I'd imagine in todays environment. Comes off as cheap. Have their capabilities been overplayed? Is selling done under pressure? Are they not actually sitting on big bank and procurement network of valuable 0days?
- phoronixrly 1y ago> The company is actually on the US Department of Commerce's sanctions list, which prohibits American companies from trading with the spyware
- seydor 1y agowhen your software is highly illegal, i doubt you can find many investors
- commandersaki 1y agoHave their capabilities been overplayed? I think so, but also while they're known as creating 0days, I think they do much more than that, and a lot of it is mundane in comparison. Probably a big departure from their glory days anyway.
- megous 1y agoMaybe gory days. How many people did they help kill or harass/imprison? https://www.amnesty.org.uk/meet-nso-group-go-company-human-rights-abusers https://www.amnesty.org.uk/meet-nso-group-go-company-human-r...
- DobarDabar 1y ago[flagged]
- djoldman 1y agoAs another comment notes, "tens of millions" implies a maximum company value of ~$200 million. Seems low. I wonder if it's because it being a foreign company was valuable because it wasn't subject to as many US laws.
- bastard_op 1y agoNormalizing spyware, it's only ok because they're Israeli good guys, and obviously would never do anything bad (like genocide).
- tunnelfx 1y agoNSO is on the US gov. Sanction list. How can it be acquired by a US entity or investors?