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A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

vanityfair.com

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Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#11

Post by devoply »

godmodus wrote: post #3

Long winded prose. Description of beards and an attempt to give the whole thing a 007 spin. Tldr; suspected government grade spyware originating from Israeli company NSO used to trap dissidents in Arab countries, targeting the iPhone (iOS 9) and utilising 2 or 3 zero days to jailbreak the device and snoop on everything it can. Would have been nice to read some technical details but there are none, and the piece goes…

Funny Israeli company helping Arab governments crack down on dissidents. Money. It brings the whole world together.

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#13

Post by acqq »

digi_owl wrote: post #7
godmodus wrote: post #3

Long winded prose. Description of beards and an attempt to give the whole thing a 007 spin. Tldr; suspected government grade spyware originating from Israeli company NSO used to trap dissidents in Arab countries, targeting the iPhone (iOS 9) and utilising 2 or 3 zero days to jailbreak the device and snoop on everything it can. Would have been nice to read some technical details but there are none, and the piece goes…

Its a social studies article masking as a tech article because iPhone. Its what you get when hipsters think they are hot shit with tech because they own something Apple made.

As far as I understand the article was written by:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Burrough

Yes, he is not a technology writer. But it's also obvious that the technology specialists weren't the target audience of this article.

It is surely not easy read for us who expect to read the technical info, and who already know most of the context.

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#14

Post by SuperPaintMan »

dan1234 wrote: post #8
LiveOverflow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there you go: http://info.lookout.com/rs/051-ESQ-475/images/lookout-pegasu...

Maybe a mod could change the article link to this?

Yeah, this wasn't written for the nerds.

Original Link

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/how-bill-marczak-spyw...

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#15

Post by godmodus »

digi_owl wrote: post #7
godmodus wrote: post #3

Long winded prose. Description of beards and an attempt to give the whole thing a 007 spin. Tldr; suspected government grade spyware originating from Israeli company NSO used to trap dissidents in Arab countries, targeting the iPhone (iOS 9) and utilising 2 or 3 zero days to jailbreak the device and snoop on everything it can. Would have been nice to read some technical details but there are none, and the piece goes…

Its a social studies article masking as a tech article because iPhone. Its what you get when hipsters think they are hot shit with tech because they own something Apple made.

the problem is having it posted to Hackernews. who here reads vanity fair ? :P

but let the normies have their day in the sun! not all hipsters are bad and i guess someone out there did enjoy the readup. i'd really wish these things weren't posted to HN though.

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#16

Post by joshkpeterson »

digi_owl wrote: post #10
jaclaz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and then: "Suddenly lines of colorful computer code began manically unspooling down his screen: a view of the alien code invading the phone." Orson Welles and his War of the Worlds was a kid in comparison.

One part hollywood, two parts liberal arts major...

Liberal arts major doesn't excuse you for this garbage

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#17

Post by tonyplee »

LiveOverflow wrote: post #4
godmodus wrote: post #3

Long winded prose. Description of beards and an attempt to give the whole thing a 007 spin. Tldr; suspected government grade spyware originating from Israeli company NSO used to trap dissidents in Arab countries, targeting the iPhone (iOS 9) and utilising 2 or 3 zero days to jailbreak the device and snoop on everything it can. Would have been nice to read some technical details but there are none, and the piece goes…

there you go: http://info.lookout.com/rs/051-ESQ-475/images/lookout-pegasu...

If Android/IOS can be modified such that all apps are always place under docker style container/VM, would it help?

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#18

Post by coldcode »

LiveOverflow wrote: post #4
godmodus wrote: post #3

Long winded prose. Description of beards and an attempt to give the whole thing a 007 spin. Tldr; suspected government grade spyware originating from Israeli company NSO used to trap dissidents in Arab countries, targeting the iPhone (iOS 9) and utilising 2 or 3 zero days to jailbreak the device and snoop on everything it can. Would have been nice to read some technical details but there are none, and the piece goes…

there you go: http://info.lookout.com/rs/051-ESQ-475/images/lookout-pegasu...

Thats the article that should have been posted. Scary that this is an actual company that built this complex spyware. Given that their customers are nation-states you could consider these folks to be a terrorist organization.

Also shows you how hard it is to build secure systems, you have to be perfect and the attacker only has to be persistent and succeed once.

Re: A Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone

#19

Post by AznHisoka »

digi_owl wrote: post #7
godmodus wrote: post #3

Long winded prose. Description of beards and an attempt to give the whole thing a 007 spin. Tldr; suspected government grade spyware originating from Israeli company NSO used to trap dissidents in Arab countries, targeting the iPhone (iOS 9) and utilising 2 or 3 zero days to jailbreak the device and snoop on everything it can. Would have been nice to read some technical details but there are none, and the piece goes…

Its a social studies article masking as a tech article because iPhone. Its what you get when hipsters think they are hot shit with tech because they own something Apple made.

hipsters are like teenage sex. everyone talks about it and makes fun of it but it dorsnt really exist.
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