Israel has some companies who are really good at this. I recall a story about the Saudis purchasing service from some Israeli companies to spy on other's cellphones.
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NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
161–170 of 321 posts
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one assumes that WhatsApp are implementing the protocol as well as signal are (which I do), then I think there are three questions in deciding what is more secure: 1. Do you trust Facebook (or open whisper systems) with your metadata/expect them to delete it? 2. How likely are there to be bugs (in the app, not in the protocol itself) which lead to exploits. On the one hand WhatsApp probably have more people workin…
WhatsApp will rekey and send old messages without notifying the user. This means MITM is possible and not always detectable. This is their intended design (but you can change the preference so that you at least get notified when it happens). (Widely reported, see Guardian article)
That guardian article was pretty bad. It scared a lot of people from WhatsApp (which is still in general mode secure than most options) to text messaging by claiming that this was somehow some huge security flaw.
From WhatsApp’s point of view this was a reasonable ux trade off. It is a major pain point of signal when it does this (particularly in group chats where it is more likely to happen).
But I agree that from a strict security focused point of view this is a disadvantage to WhatsApp.
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#163What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?
If an American tech company tried to do something like this some employees would refuse and you would hear about the employee protests. I think because of the compulsory military service and their multi-generational dirty war Israel engineers don't seem to have these kinds of moral qualms.
(Normally I get flagged on HN for saying things like this, would love an explanation if it happens this time.)
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#164Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.
In fact, demonstrating this point is probably part of the reason Facebook is litigating this case. It gives them a solid example of the risks of backdoors that they can point to when governments ask for them.
There's a nice plot stemming from there.
“A rogue big tech employee puts on a grey hat to orchestrate a hack + personal blackmail on government officials, to instill a deep fear out of them and make them realize the folly of refusing end-to-end encryption.”
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
A buddy of mine is Special Forces (U.S.). He said JSOC recently banned use of WhatsApp and encouraged everyone to switch to the open-source Signal (another encrypted messaging app). Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption (OpenWhisper) but I stopped trusting it the second Facebook bought them out.
If one assumes that WhatsApp are implementing the protocol as well as signal are (which I do), then I think there are three questions in deciding what is more secure: 1. Do you trust Facebook (or open whisper systems) with your metadata/expect them to delete it? 2. How likely are there to be bugs (in the app, not in the protocol itself) which lead to exploits. On the one hand WhatsApp probably have more people workin…
'On the one hand WhatsApp probably have more people working on the app'
From a career in software development, I tend to feel that the more devs, the buggier. Maybe, MAYBE (number of QA)/(number of devs) = reliability coefficient.
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#166Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#167What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?
Jews are extremely overrepresented amongst scientific, business, cultural, and political elites compared to how many of them are in the world. Just look at the list of 500 richest people, or Nobel Prize winners. I took a class on it back in the day in the uni. There are long and complicated historical factors contributing to this, including centuries of Catholic-church mandated Jewish monopoly on law & banking (i.e.…
> On top of that, everybody has been trying to murder Jews during the entire history, so there's a lot of natural selection.
Wow! Does it work too for the blacks? Maybe, blacks run fast to escape from whites on electric cars!! And women! Women are prettier than men to manipulate men!!
Please, don't do that. Please DON’T.
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#168What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?
High levels of investment, mandatory military service, and exceptionally good education.
If you ever get the chance to talk to someone from Israel, especially someone in tech who was raised in Israel, I recommend it. Ask them about where they went to school. You'll learn a lot.
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
A buddy of mine is Special Forces (U.S.). He said JSOC recently banned use of WhatsApp and encouraged everyone to switch to the open-source Signal (another encrypted messaging app). Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption (OpenWhisper) but I stopped trusting it the second Facebook bought them out.
If one assumes that WhatsApp are implementing the protocol as well as signal are (which I do), then I think there are three questions in deciding what is more secure: 1. Do you trust Facebook (or open whisper systems) with your metadata/expect them to delete it? 2. How likely are there to be bugs (in the app, not in the protocol itself) which lead to exploits. On the one hand WhatsApp probably have more people workin…
Even of they implement the Signal protocol, they have additional modifications to support ads, which increases the attack surface.
Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact, demonstrating this point is probably part of the reason Facebook is litigating this case. It gives them a solid example of the risks of backdoors that they can point to when governments ask for them.
There's a nice plot stemming from there. “A rogue big tech employee puts on a grey hat to orchestrate a hack + personal blackmail on government officials, to instill a deep fear out of them and make them realize the folly of refusing end-to-end encryption.”
Mr Robot season 5