Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t need any input from the user/target. Once the malicious code reaches the device the exploit works its magic.
An open source cellular modem firmware is long overdue, but there's no government on Earth that would be keen on allowing it to happen, the best we have is 2G/3G stuff that has been illegally leaked and reverse engineered. A lot of dragons lurking in the dark there.
NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
321–330 of 330 posts
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#322On the other hand, perhaps the hardware/OS designs of iOS and Android devices are fundamentally flawed, when viewed from a security-first perspective.
By now every piece of software and hardware that is in use, every abstraction layer in that computing tower of bable has been thoroughly hacked. Anywhere from plaintext passwords on a server to insane exploits like Rowhammer, those security websites and podcasts have long weekly litanies of tragedy. Additionally there is all-knowing Google, chinese phones phoning home, undocumented functions in intel processors, ISPs…
> make simple provably correct and safe hardware and a small and minimal OS that has browsing and communications built in.
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
sounds like they should be treated like mercenaries.
What exactly do you mean by "treated like mercenaries", what should be the treatment in your opinion ? In general, countries do hire mercenaries/private military contractors/etc, and it is not considered anything special, and many powerful countries (including e.g. the USA) routinely use mercenaries in their campaigns. the "sending" nation may restrict their people and companies from mercenary actions abroad if they…
The only difference between a mercenary and a terrorist is that the former is a US citizen, isn’t it?
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
man why do people even take the gamble of using a blur just use a opaque box
Opaque boxes have been issues before, when they end up being "semi-transparent" and you can up the brightness to beat them. Safest is probably just to cut/crop the sensitive bits out.
The information is lost if you have a flat image without any layers. You should take additional steps for other formats of course. Granted, it has to be completely opaque of course.
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm English ... and Welsh, Cornish, Scottish and tangentially Irish, not to mention German (check my username). Sorry, but this is absolutely nonsensical to me, how can you be all these nationalities? Were you born on the most insane round trip flight ever or what? Edit: And sorry, as a Scot (One actually born there); 'the country' is not called 'Great Britain'. As a nationality we group identify as both $member-co…
It actually sounds like the sort of lineage that is very common among Americans.
I live in Somerset (UK) and have a 15 gen. ancestor from Cornwall.
Your point is?
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I really hope the blur on the picture ( https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hubbard-Ima ...) isn't hiding anything actually important because that can almost certainly be de-blurred with the right tooling. Yeah, the right way to use blurring is to mockup a lookalike for content you want to hide, then blur the mockup.
You don't even need this. I searched "unblur" in Google Play Store, downloaded the first result, tweaked the settings a touch, and I could make out the characters. The whole process took a couple minutes. If the data actually needs to be hidden, this picture should be taken down.
if you generate a lookalike full of UUIDs, you don't really need to blur except for dramatic effect I guess.
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nils Melzer dismissed the fact that he was free to leave by making the analogy that someone in shark tank is "free to leave" their boat - but what is the analogy to being eaten by sharks here? Just the normal experience of being in prison in the UK? Is it the position of the UN that every person in prison in the UK is being "tortured"?
> but what is the analogy to being eaten by sharks here? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-off...
But so far this has been shown to be nonsense, right? He's just being processed like a normal person awaiting extradition.
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Subbed. Any other recos? Been looking to scratch that Reply All itch.
Maybe not the same but Co Recursive is excellent https://corecursive.com/ The host is very thoughtful and the conversations that come from that are lovely.
Their episode Memento Mori[1] with Kate Gregory cemented for me that this podcast isn't like others, it is incredibly thoughtful and insightful and has a lot to offer everyone whose interests involve software and engineering. For all the technical topics it covers, it is a very human podcast.
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
man why do people even take the gamble of using a blur just use a opaque box
Opaque boxes have been issues before, when they end up being "semi-transparent" and you can up the brightness to beat them. Safest is probably just to cut/crop the sensitive bits out.
This is how I get FOIA responses. Agencies just remove the pieces they don't want me to see, sometimes with a code to tell me why it was excised. I use the redaction feature built into Acrobat.
Re: NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even without automation. Just make a list of blurred alphanumerics, then match every blurred character in the picture against the character list. with some patience probably doable in a single day
That’s called generative recognition, and it’s the best way to do it (probably can be formally proved under some noise model assumptions) if you have a good model of the data and enough computational resources.
What tools do people use for stuff like this? A python library? C++?