Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

citizenlab.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 314 posts

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#201

Post by baybal2 »

slavak wrote: post #178
DSingularity wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Facebook was sincere, they could have held their ground. The Israeli government would then have to decide whether it was willing to ban a platform so widely used in their country or to simply fine them. Instead, FB decided to comply. Just a bunch of dead brown people — who cares?

The Israeli government has absolutely no say in how any of this plays out, that is the entire point of an independent judiciary. The lawsuit and sanctions are decided by the courts based on existing laws and precedent, and for them Facebook's size or position in the Israeli market does not (and should not) hold any weight whatsoever. The most the legislative can do is amend the relevant laws to make what Facebook tri…

> The Israeli government has absolutely no say in how any of this plays out, that is the entire point of an independent judiciary.

Israel has no genuinely independent judiciary, nor genuinely free press.

IDF regularly intervenes in both, that's a very poorly held secret.

Any normal nation would be completely horrified at the prospect of a private company effectively intervening into its foreign relations, but Israel is remarkably not, and even seem to give NSO a considerable amount of legal cover.

I believe it's just a cover for the state to distance itself from the activity in public eyes, just like IDF distances itself from peddling military hardware around the world by hiding behind "independent private companies."

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#202

Post by j0ej0ej0e »

keyme wrote: post #134
bjourne wrote: post #104

How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this exploit are clearly "brilliant" and at least some of them are bound to be reading Hacker News. Is other countries' spyware firms just better at hiding their malware than Israel's is?

When HackingTeam was exposed, no one was asking to sanction Italy. Hating on Israel specifically is a very cool and woke thing to do. Has been for decades.

> Hating on Israel specifically is a very cool and woke thing to do. Has been for decades.

Well Israeli has been treating palestinians pretty badly so it's not like it isn't justified.

At least critising Israel for genuine reasons isn't deemed anti-semitic in the latest international standard of the definition, oh wait!

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#203

Post by dmingod666 »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #81
Despegar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America didn't stop giving aid to Israel despite 53 years of military occupation and apartheid. You think this is going to be the thing that changes the status quo on Israel?

Sponsoring international terrorism used to be a real faux pas in the U.S. I guess those days are over.

I wonder how you would classify osama bin laden between the years 1979-1989. The US and KSA gave him a total of 40 billion USD during this period..

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#204

Post by aex »

canofbars wrote: post #9

Apple needs to do a serious architecture of how its own apps work. Its clearly unacceptable that their own apps are not sandboxed to the same level as everything else. If its not possible to implement all of imessage with the public APIs then they need to find a way to expose those private APIs publicly in a safe way. imessage and facetime have been a constant source of exploits.

iOS and macOS don’t allow to delete many of their apps. Why on earth I have to have iMessage if I don’t use it?

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#205

Post by fakedang »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #138
fakedang wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Khashoggi wasn't American. And imo, he was an idiot - never sought asylum, constantly criticized the Saudi regime, and in the end got diced because he decided it would be spiffy to go to the embassy of the very regime he attacked to get a marriage document or something. That was hubris at play, thinking that he was highly placed enough to not be killed.

Killing idiots is still evil, not sure how any of that matters in the slightest. I also don't think his nationality should matter, but you're right that he was only a US resident.

His nationality matters in that the US shouldn't raise as much hue and cry as people expected them to do. In fact, the US response was more than sufficient.

Should the US government be equally responsible for your life if you decide to put your head inside a crocodile's mouth? Yet the US government does its part *1000 to get its own citizens back to safety (or kills them with drones, but that's another story). Most countries don't even bother with such hassles - on the contrary, if you're unlucky enough to be British, your government will try to use you as a bargaining chip.

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#206

Post by captain_price7 »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #106
bjourne wrote: post #104

How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this exploit are clearly "brilliant" and at least some of them are bound to be reading Hacker News. Is other countries' spyware firms just better at hiding their malware than Israel's is?

It’s called selection bias. It’s fun and always acceptable to hate on Israel. It’s also more memorable due to the sensationalization of it. A few years ago bluecoat systems was caught providing deep packet inspection gear to the Syrian government. But that wasn’t Israel so no biggie and you either never heard about it or didn’t pay much attention because it wasn’t Israel. American and European companies do this all t…

>It’s fun and always acceptable to hate on Israel

Don't people routinely get called anti-semite for just criticizing the Israeli government? Except for some small circles, I don't think your statement is true, it's certainly not true for mainstream US politics.

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#207

Post by mike_d »

tonyhb wrote: post #171
kortilla wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to have a dedicated bug fixer whose only job was hunting bugs. No meetings, no scrum, no design docs, etc.

Kind of like a red team.

Ha. If you happen to know of a red team that doesn't have to still go to meetings and write documentation, please let me know so I can switch employers. :)

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#208

Post by cowsandmilk »

ThePadawan wrote: post #188
bjourne wrote: post #104

How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this exploit are clearly "brilliant" and at least some of them are bound to be reading Hacker News. Is other countries' spyware firms just better at hiding their malware than Israel's is?

> Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? ...Is ethis taught in any CS curriculum? It sure wasn't in mine (but to be fair, that was in Switzerland).

It is required for a program to be accredited by abet in the US

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#209

Post by roddds »

ignoramous wrote: post #168
harish5p wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these apps similar to Blockada? https://blokada.org/

Blokada isn't a serious security app. It leaks DNS connections over TCP (only handles UDP) and uses covert techniques to track users (generates a unique ID for every install and sends it tagged with the phone model every time one visits a blokada webpage from within the app). Yeah, no where close. Disclaimer: I work on privacy enhancing tech on Android.

As a user of Blokada myself I'd like to ask, is there any system-wide ad blocker for Android you would recommend?

Re: Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit

#210

Post by captain_price7 »

keyme wrote: post #134
bjourne wrote: post #104

How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this exploit are clearly "brilliant" and at least some of them are bound to be reading Hacker News. Is other countries' spyware firms just better at hiding their malware than Israel's is?

When HackingTeam was exposed, no one was asking to sanction Italy. Hating on Israel specifically is a very cool and woke thing to do. Has been for decades.

Oh come on. It's not like Italy has been bombing foreign scientists, sending assassins all around the world, or illegally occupying an entire country for seven decades.
Post reply on HN