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

reuters.com

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

#111

Post by patrickyeon »

smnrchrds wrote: post #39
s_dev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I just have to buy a US phone to evade detection from NSO? And why didn't that logic work for US State Dept phones? I'm honestly of the opinion there is nothing that NSO can say that isn't outright lying. This isn't a normal company in anyway.

I remember reading that some Russian (private sector) computer viruses did not attack computers whose language and locale were set to Russia. It's never about ethics. It's always about making as much money as possible without pissing off powerful people and entities.

Crudely, we would say "don't shit where you eat". I've heard from the early (as in, 80's) hacking days some of the people in the US would never hit targets in their own state, as there wasn't good federal-level enforcement nor inter-state collaboration. Of course that would backfire today because you're immediately commiting crimes across state lines...

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

#112

Post by cronix »

As an American, it's becoming harder for me to muster sympathy for an entity that actively discovers and exploits technological flaws to use against their adversaries while simultaneously purposefully not alerting the manufacturers in order to correct the flaws so they can continue to exploit them and then those flaws are subsequently discovered by others and used against them. Poor you.

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

#113

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #29
DelightOne wrote: post #7

Is there a timetable when Apple plans to stop using memory-unsafe languages to avoid memory-bugs? If not, how can the amount of zero-days stop with constant development?

biggest issue here isn't memory safety but the dumpster fire of imessage format that calls out to privileged parts of the system

It's an extremely common attack vector. PDFs, media message, etc. Would it be viable to create a dedicated processor specifically for parsing these things?

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

#114

Post by walrus01 »

drusepth wrote: post #91
walrus01 wrote: post #11

I'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant", as they have done with foreign citizen wahabbist jihadis and US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki. Given the extent and depth of US-Israeli cooperation and ties, the precedeing theoretical is probably going to remain in the realm of theoretical.

Didn't they get pretty close with Huawei when the previous president issued an executive order in response to state spying fears that: * banned the sale of any of their phones or networking products in the US * banned US companies selling product to Huawei * cut funding to wireless carriers using Huawei equipment ...and then pressured allied countries to do the same?

The investigation into Huawei was going on for many years prior to 2016. It's not exactly an initiative of the previous president.

I sat in briefings about Huawei and ZTE in 2007. Regretfully can't say more.

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

#115

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

While I find it interesting that focus in comments appears to be on Israel, NSO and the complicated ( or not really that complicated if you look at it from a different angle ) relationship between them and US. I did not see a mention a broader discussion of, you know, hoarding zero days, exploits and whether using those can be worse than conventional weaponry.

The reason I find it interesting is because it is clear that US government supports Israel ( and NSO ) practically unconditionally ( recent vote on Iron Dome being a more amusing example of bipartisanship ).

Why is Reuters, an old guard by any account, concerned? Or are they simply following what sells and government is really at odds with its people when it comes to policy in ME.

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

#117

Post by shmatt »

s_dev wrote: post #26
boomboomsubban wrote: post #10

>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…

So I just have to buy a US phone to evade detection from NSO? And why didn't that logic work for US State Dept phones? I'm honestly of the opinion there is nothing that NSO can say that isn't outright lying. This isn't a normal company in anyway.

* A US Phone will route your call via NSA servers[1], so yeah thats OK from the US governments side

* Publicly at least, NSO acknowledges there are state level agreements, the latest one with France, to block entire country codes from Pegasus (in return, France has stopped all legal action against NSO)

* According to Israeli Channel 12 reporting on this tonight, the official NSO response also includes the statement that the accused numbers in the report were not +1 numbers. Their so called "customers" were targeting US government employees using African area codes. NSO claim they have completely disconnected said customers from the system

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

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

#118

Post by voz_ »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #52

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.

Please don't virtue signal, or state flame wars, or use this to posture some kind of agenda.

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

#119

Post by snarf21 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #10

>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…

"We promise we don't work on numbers with +1" :wink: :wink:

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

#120

Post by mullingitover »

montblanc wrote: post #73
loeg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

The attacks on NATO are such a weird thing. US support of NATO isn't a charity operation, there are strategic and economic benefits to the US from NATO participation that greatly exceed the expenses.

If the argument is that the United States shouldn't be a global power, that it should dismantle the US military and be a demure, multilateral player in the international space, sure, attack NATO. However, attacking NATO while saying the US should be a stronger international player is contradictory.

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