Wow you have to be on HN to see Pegasus portrayed by some people as ‘the little guy’ fighting ‘evil’ Apple.
Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
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Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that the word 'sponsorship' has been quite diluted, as you point out, but it should mean something more than 'be a customer of'. Do I sponsor my local sports team when I buy tickets to a game? Am I sponsoring Netflix by subscribing? Do I sponsor my local government by paying property taxes? On the flip side, does my government sponsor me by granting a driver's license?
I get bothered by the use of the term "nation-state" in this context. And I thought I was pedantic.
>"I get bothered by the use of the term "nation-state" in this context.
And I thought I was pedantic. "
I don't think I'm being pedantic, it seems like people use the word 'sponsor' in these contexts to exaggerate and vilify.
Nobody seems to have used the word 'nation-state' in this post; what made you think of it?
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#143If you think that israel is doing anything not sanctioned by the US government you are mistaken. In Israel NSO cant make a move without 7 agencies regulating it. This is considered a weapon sale. The same weapons the US are sponsoring israel and buy them from israeli industry. There is no way NSO will fail from this. So eula or whatever these are matters between states for national security interests.
Agreed, there is a channel for private entities to resolve matters of the state and that is via lobbying the executive or the legislative. Going after Israel's outsourced intelligence technology research group via the judiciary branch risks Apple being caught in the political crossfire. Apple at the end of the day is not Blackwater, they do not have any form of influence over force if things really hits the fan. Israel isn't a South American banana republic that can be easily overthrown by private corporations either. To put it in perspective, how would you react if (hypothetically) Lockheed Martin gets sued by Yandex if one of their missiles blew up a self driving car being tested in some far flung Central Asian state? Do you expect Lockheed Martin to be bound by contractual laws in the city of Moscow and for the matter to be settled via civilian lawsuit or arbitration?
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> do we really want those inane licenses no one reads, and everyone scrolls down to hit [agree]; do we really want them to legally binding? for commercial interactions in particular between two businesses? Yes, absolutely. How else are two entities supposed to come to legally binding terms without a contract? I'm all for a little bit of lenience when an end user didn't read the terms but you think NSO group doesn't h…
(Not a lawyer, but this is the correct answer) As much as people might look at this and think Apple is being heavy-handed, it comes down to the fact that iCloud, iOS, and the App Store are their IP and they can (within legal limits) set whatever terms they please. Especially for these sorts of arrangements, it seems like a problem to me if the platform/IP owner doesn't have absolute, final discretion over what happen…
This sits so unwell with me, gives such limitless tyrannical & dictatorial control to a company.
> As much as people might look at this and think Apple is being heavy-handed, it comes down to the fact that iCloud, iOS, and the App Store are their IP and they can (within legal limits) set whatever terms they please.
Agreed. That's exactly what it seems like. And that sounds like immoral, unjustifiable, sickening hell. That Apple gets to hold all the cards, no one else on the planet gets any say in how a device might be used.
It seems to me like the law is immoral. The law is heavy handed, an idiot, and wrong. And it seems like Apple is a user/abuser of unjust power which it does not have any moral or ethical right to wield.
> Especially for these sorts of arrangements, it seems like a problem to me if the platform/IP owner doesn't have absolute, final discretion over what happens.
This sounds like a nightmare hell world to me. It contravenes the idea that any of us can ever be owners of anything. This sounds like the logic that says that only Tesla can repair Tesla cars, the logic that says only John Deere can repair John Deere tractors. This is an anti-human world, this is a bad world, this is immoral, this is wrong, this destroys & rots away at humanity as a can-do toolmaker, as an improver of the world about them. It consigns power away to fragile, remote, limited corporations. That is not a world I ever want to let happen to us. I tend towards aethism/agnosticism, but if there is a god, this flies against what graces the gods have given us to let ourselves be constrained so. It is unnatural & against the spirit of the human enterprise.
I have no love for NSO Group. It feels great seeing such a group of shady, underhanded, anti-democratic punks get served. But this is absolutely going to be yet another move in the ongoing shift towards top-down combined technocratic/legal control. It's absolutely a demonstration of Apple wielding legal power to obstruct & defend that which it simply doesn't want to have to deal with, brushing aside something inconvenient. It's absolutely a battle over what terms of service mean & whether the world has any rights of their own. I for one am not cheering for Apple's victory in having their massive iron-clad armor further enhanced.
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’m sorry but there’s no world where Apple can make perfect security i think everyone knows that perfect security is not possible, the operative word being ‘perfect’. i think what we want is for apple to ‘actually try’ to provide security, in some way that results in security order of magnitudes better than we enjoy today, which would still be miles and miles away from ‘perfect’, vulnerable to nation state actors e…
Can you point to a single instance of a cellphone vendor who takes security more seriously than Apple? Put a different way, is there any device with a high monthly active user count that has a higher cost to purchase a black market exploit than the iPhone? Apple can always do better. It should also scare the living hell out of us that they’re currently the best in the world. My point is that if Apple can’t secure you…
> Put a different way, is there any device with a high monthly active user count that has a higher cost to purchase a black market exploit than the iPhone?
I'm going to answer about operating system rather than device.
The selling price of an Android full chain with persistence zero click is up to $2.5 million. The selling price of an iOS full chain with persistence zero click is up to $2 million.
https://zerodium.com/program.html
Both are better than any desktop operating system.
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#146If you think that israel is doing anything not sanctioned by the US government you are mistaken. In Israel NSO cant make a move without 7 agencies regulating it. This is considered a weapon sale. The same weapons the US are sponsoring israel and buy them from israeli industry. There is no way NSO will fail from this. So eula or whatever these are matters between states for national security interests.
Yes, the many US government 3 letter agencies would love to have full read access to every single iPhone in the world. It doesn't mean Apple needs to comply, or that doing so without a search warrant is legal in California
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it great? The lawsuit is Apple trying to enforce the iCloud EULA to stop reverse engineering. While NSO Group created hacking tools, and then did some questionable things with them, do we really want those inane licenses no one reads, and everyone scrolls down to hit [agree]; do we really want them to legally binding? Put another way, if it was someone HN liked , would we still say this is actually good? Because c…
They are just using the EULA as the basis for claiming jurisdiction. They are actually suing not to stop reverse engineering but rather to recover damages incurred by unlawful business practices. Basically their argument is that: 0) The defendant's can be sued under California law because they accepted the EULA. 1) California law makes businesses liable for damages incurred by their unlawful business practices. 2) Bu…
Nit (maybe moot):
> 4) Apple incurred damages […] from expenses related to mitigating the hacking of their users.
This sounds like no one should be a security researcher for they risk paying companies to implement the security the company should have implemented anyway. Put another way, that also sounds like the corporate open source push, "We love open source because we don't have to support it, the community will!"
"4)" says the community will pay for/support security, just wait for the hack and make 'em clean it up. Mitigation costs shouldn't be a recoverable damage, they should be doubled and paid out to the victims...maybe that'll incentivise better security over dollar dollar bills y'all.
This all maybe moot because this was a B2B action and I'm thinking from a non-monied, single user/security researcher perspective. What if the company was a non-profit security research group? Perhaps this is what the 90day grace periods are for when dealing with responsible disclosure?
Anyhow, my ignorance must be showing at this point.
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#148The framing of NSO as "state-sponsored" cannot be overstated, and Apple didn't miss the chance to do just that. A hard blow to Israel's policy just as much as it is to NSO itself.
One could interpret this as the software is "sponsored" by the governments that finance their operations and purchase their products. This would be countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Germany, and Kazakhstan, not necessarily Israel. Though the fact the US has sanctioned an Israeli business does seem to have potential implications on Israeli policy. [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-blacklists-four-compan…
NSO would not sell to those countries if the regional interests of Saudi /UAE were unaligned with the Israeli desires for the regions. Israel wants dictatorships throughout the Arabian peninsula and turmoil within the borders of all of its neighbors. The NSO software helps advance Israeli interests on both those fronts.
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't NSO Group an Israeli firm with close ties to government? I strongly doubt anything will come of this.
NSO have started threating to release dirt on Israeli politicians because they are unhappy that the Israeli government isn't covering for them.
source? My thought is if you tried this in israel the actual intelligence apparatus would have you picked up pretty quickly and in a dark hole for as long as they wanted.
Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware
#150If you think that israel is doing anything not sanctioned by the US government you are mistaken. In Israel NSO cant make a move without 7 agencies regulating it. This is considered a weapon sale. The same weapons the US are sponsoring israel and buy them from israeli industry. There is no way NSO will fail from this. So eula or whatever these are matters between states for national security interests.
The US Government is not a single-minded entity. Covert actions sanctioned by a balding old men in a dingy fluorescent lit room can still end up quashed when they come to light and the courts get involved.