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U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

reuters.com

71–80 of 651 posts

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how some ransomware looks for if your default keyboard language is Russian. If so then it exits, doing nothing.

OK, so the best way to protect privacy is to get US-based phone number and install Russian keyboard as a default.

And it should have a list of sites blocked by Chinese regime downloaded as discovered by Lithuania [0], for even grater privacy.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28616683

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#72

The Israel government gets a pass for anything they do. Whether it is lying about nukes or what they've done to Palestine. NSO is a feather in their cap.

Why are you conflating Israel (a state) and NSO (a fully private company, owned by American private equity at some point)?

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Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#73
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US provides substantial financial, military, and political aid to Israel, that it does not provide to Germany.

The U.S basically protects the whole of Europe by subsidizing NATO. It's probably in the trillions. Sorry but Trump had a point there. What it gives Israel is peanuts compared to that. Without U.S support to Europe who knows what happens, maybe the Russians and Chinese start looking at Europe as easy prey to pick on. Also the obsession with Israel isn't a uniquely American thing, it's the same in France and Canada and Germany and basically any Western country.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#74
post #59

>In a public response, NSO has said its technology helps stop terrorism and that they've installed controls to curb spying against innocent targets. For example, NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1. So the point is to stop terrorism and to do that they've immediately ruled that all Americans aren't terrorists. That doesn't seem like a good metric of…

These people are in for a world of hurt, the State Department tells the CIA what to do.

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Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#75
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is there another popular spyware company being used by rogue states to perform terrorist attacks?

DarkMatter seems to have done basically the same as NSO, except with an even more explicit US connection.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#76
post #59

>In a public response, NSO has said its technology helps stop terrorism and that they've installed controls to curb spying against innocent targets. For example, NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1. So the point is to stop terrorism and to do that they've immediately ruled that all Americans aren't terrorists. That doesn't seem like a good metric of…

These people are in for a world of hurt, the State Department tells the CIA what to do.

> State Department tells the CIA what to do

Your broader point is correct, but no, it doesn't. The CIA is an independent agency [1]. It reports to the DNI [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intellige...

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#77

The Israel government gets a pass for anything they do. Whether it is lying about nukes or what they've done to Palestine. NSO is a feather in their cap.

Why are you conflating Israel (a state) and NSO (a fully private company, owned by American private equity at some point)?

> Why are you conflating Israel (a state) and NSO (a fully private company, owned by American private equity at some point)?

Because Jerusalem has the power to stop, or at the very least regulate, NSO.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#78
post #22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NSO has repeatedly shown that their statements are pretty much worthless. It's just damage control. I wouldn't put any stock in the "we avoid +1 numbers" to even be real.

Seriously, they're pretty much the Mark Zuckerberg of their industry.

I‘d rather compare Zuckerberg to the Sackler family who knew how addictive and harmful their painkiller Oxycotin was, yet ignoring all evicence, making billions of dollars. Zuckerberg knows how bad Facebook and Instagram is, how harmful to individuals and society alike, yet ignoring that and making billions.

Edit: Replaced „social media“ with „Facebook and Instagram“

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#79

I thought the exploited holes were patched by iOS at some point. How are these phones still getting hacked?

Exploits are now a multi-billion dollar market. And iPhones can be obtained worldwide. You just need one person with questionable morals, good hardware hacking skills and a need for some hefty payout.

There's a lot of buyers, Five Eyes, China, Russia and naturally companies like NSO.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your definition of rogue states? The U.S sells weapons to the Saudis in hundreds of billions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_States%E2%80%93Sau... . So I should believe the U.S thinks it's OK to sell F-15 planes but not OK to sell software? I'm gonna assume yes, there are probably other players in cyber warfare who sell to these countries, probably also the U.S.

> the U.S thinks it's OK to sell F-15 planes but not OK to sell software? The U.S. thinks it's okay to sell F-15s that don't attack Americans and not okay to sell software that attacks Americans. As a, granted, American, I'm not seeing the incoherence.

Attacks Americans? Come on now, don't go overboard sir.
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