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NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

reuters.com

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Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even of they implement the Signal protocol, they have additional modifications to support ads, which increases the attack surface.

Does WhatsApp have ads?

They are already onboarding advertisers and will have ads appear in the app very soon. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even of they implement the Signal protocol, they have additional modifications to support ads, which increases the attack surface.

Well, and as pointed out elsewhere the signal protocol only covers messages in transit. How keys are managed, etc. also strongly affect security. In the signal app, the phones own the keys rather than another entity (hence why messages get rekeyed on whatsapp and why you're easily able to load messages on a new phone).

Reread my comment. If you have additional code to support things like ads, you add attack surface for people to find a way to inject code execution in the context of the WhatsApp process, which has access to the decrypted messages.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#303
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little eye opening to me that anyone could have a friend group that "universally prefers open source software to good UX". I have and use Signal with some friends, but there are also loads of people I communicate with who couldn't even tell you what open source software is, let alone articulate a preference for it over good UX. Are all of your friends software engineers and/or technophiles?

"It's a little eye opening to me that anyone could have a friend group that "universally prefers open source software to good UX" Plenty of us still prefer using command-line to this very day. Most of my work is still done on DOS 6.22.

I like the command line and it doesn't surprise me that other people do too. What surprises me is that there are people where an entire friend group universally prefers open source over good UX, since plenty of my friends couldn't tell you what the terms "command line", "open source", and "UX" mean.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to call this a "backdoor". Because of E2EE the law enforcement access is limited to looking up IP addresses associated with whatsapp users and such.

That was my question. What information does WhatsApp share with the law enforcement. Just, as you said IP and so, or also the messages?

if it's truly end to end encrypted, they would only have metadata. which is what the NSA collects en masse from Telecom providers.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#305
post #257
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NSO still have multiple ubpatched 0 days in WhatsApp Telegram and most other messaging apps. Your best bet is to use something obscure so you cannot easily be targeted or not being connected to the same net. At the Israeli army we had phones that ran completely separate software stacks and talked to a different network for this. Nothing was on the internet.

That's really clever. Using a custom made program or something obscure would be the only safe way.

PureOS + GNURadio + a software-defined radio + a power amplifier...

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my question. What information does WhatsApp share with the law enforcement. Just, as you said IP and so, or also the messages?

if it's truly end to end encrypted, they would only have metadata. which is what the NSA collects en masse from Telecom providers.

>which is what the NSA collects en masse from Telecom providers

What does that even mean? There are so many different kinds of metadata I'm not sure why it's useful to compare Telecom metadata collection to Whatsapp.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#307
post #107

Earlier 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.

> Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption (OpenWhisper About the partnership: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ But of course, in this case the issue seems to be either compromise of the device(s) via zero days, whatsapp usage simply being the target matrix - and/or a leveraging a zero day in whatsapp for full device compromise. It's unlikely signal would be immune - they didn't Crack the encryption, the…

> The only advantage signal has is a conservative interface and small userbase.

Signal is open source, WhatsApp is not. So how did you determine Signal has only one advantage over WhatsApp, without access to the WhatsApp source code?

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#308
post #307
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption (OpenWhisper About the partnership: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ But of course, in this case the issue seems to be either compromise of the device(s) via zero days, whatsapp usage simply being the target matrix - and/or a leveraging a zero day in whatsapp for full device compromise. It's unlikely signal would be immune - they didn't Crack the encryption, the…

> The only advantage signal has is a conservative interface and small userbase. Signal is open source, WhatsApp is not. So how did you determine Signal has only one advantage over WhatsApp, without access to the WhatsApp source code?

Advantage in terms of security vulnerabilities - evidence seems to indicate that having the source code available isn't a big factor in reducing zero days. In addition, signal isn't any more protected against a rooted device.

Nothing seems to indicate a back door here.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide any sources? Surprised to see Credit Karma on here...

It comes mainly from mapping the subdomains over time and analysis of the ASNs. This is key. You will often see a company with perhaps 200 or so subdomains, that only does business in the United States. But then you will see one subdomain that maps to ASN 4803 or whatever, which then leads to “China Telecom xinjiang”. In fact I encourage you to type: org:”China Telecom xinjiang” “NSFOCUS” into Shodan. Also look at th…

They subcontract their support to India. William Lu is a scammer and a well known liar. He pays people on web hosting forums to keep it quiet about how he scams his customers. The guy has cockroaches in his data center. He has no money and has lost more than half his ip space in the past year. He even got recorded a few months back in a big conference call admitting he lies about everything and charges his customers for services he doesn't even provide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzHS4E2e8Bg there's also a dope ass diss track about how garbage their service is on there too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZBWd1Z2yY0

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#310
post #163

What 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.)

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