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

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 651 posts

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

#201

Post by chillwaves »

dqpb wrote: post #187
markus_zhang wrote: post #150

This is a typical "shadow government" symptom. You have forces working within the government that 1) have their own agendas; 2) have connection to international communities, usually military-intelligence ones; 3) have almost zero regulation; 4) even many high ranking government officials don't know about them because they are brotherhood-like closed circles. This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but d…

> 3) have almost zero regulation; What would shadow government regulation look like?

Enforce our laws would be a good start.

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

#202

Post by fsflover »

mjamil wrote: post #189

Is anyone working on a microkernel design for privacy-sensitive devices (like phones) that would prevent outright this class of kernel-level arbitrary code execution exploits? We're stuck with iOS and Android for the foreseeable future, but is there hope that we'll get this right some day? Actually, would a microkernel design even be sufficient? Given that hackers exploit deserialization, memory safety, and variable…

Perhaps something like this: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor.

Or, just use Linux on the smartphone and harden it with a smartcard (Librem 5).

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

#203

Post by Raqbit »

mjamil wrote: post #189

Is anyone working on a microkernel design for privacy-sensitive devices (like phones) that would prevent outright this class of kernel-level arbitrary code execution exploits? We're stuck with iOS and Android for the foreseeable future, but is there hope that we'll get this right some day? Actually, would a microkernel design even be sufficient? Given that hackers exploit deserialization, memory safety, and variable…

Google is, with Fuchsia: https://fuchsia.dev

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

#204

Post by KMag »

montblanc wrote: post #146
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Attacks Americans? I was delineating why the U.S. is fine with selling weapons to e.g. Saudi Arabia but would not be happy about those same weapons being sold by Russia to Iran. You seemed confused on that point. There isn't a grand philosophy. It's international relations. It's anarchy. The U.S. government promotes American and allied interests. Separately, yes, if you're hacking the State Department, you're attac…

This wasn't done by NSO knowingly. I have no reason not to believe them on that, they have a financial and strategic interest not to piss America off that bad. Also - Uganda is not Iran, it's a friendly country. Unfortunately someone there decided to use it against American diplomats which is unfortunate.

> This wasn't done by NSO knowingly.

In the past month or so, there was a front page story on HN about NSO and a journalist, detailing evidence that NSO-controlled servers served up the exploit to the journalist's phone. This suggests that the NSO group has less of an arms-length relationship with their clients than they let on. It seems that at least for some clients, they're running some variant on exploits-as-a-service.

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

#205

Post by brendoelfrendo »

maltalex wrote: post #46

I don't understand the focus on NSO in these stories. If U.S State Department personnel in Uganda were shot from an M-16, would the headline mention "an American arms manufacturer"? No, because it's ridiculous. For better or worse, NSO's product is a weapon. How is it any different from an M-16? Where is the outrage towards the people who used this weapon against the State Department?

Weapon merchants get flack all the time for selling their wares to... we'll call them "rivals," but it could be any state or organization not in the US's sphere of influence.

NSO gets particular flack because they're inextricable from the weapon they sell. If an M-16 is used to shoot someone, provenance is probably harder to prove; weapons change hands all the time, or are smuggled to ne're-do-wells via the black market. But everyone using Pegasus, as far as we know, is an NSO client; NSO made the choice to provide that software, including NSO support and NSO services.

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

#206

Post by markus_zhang »

dqpb wrote: post #187
markus_zhang wrote: post #150

This is a typical "shadow government" symptom. You have forces working within the government that 1) have their own agendas; 2) have connection to international communities, usually military-intelligence ones; 3) have almost zero regulation; 4) even many high ranking government officials don't know about them because they are brotherhood-like closed circles. This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but d…

> 3) have almost zero regulation; What would shadow government regulation look like?

It's difficult, you have to break down those brotherhoods who will fight to death to be "independent". And then you have to find a way to prevent them from spawning again. I don't have any idea how to do it properly.

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

#207

Post by KennyBlanken »

markus_zhang wrote: post #150

This is a typical "shadow government" symptom. You have forces working within the government that 1) have their own agendas; 2) have connection to international communities, usually military-intelligence ones; 3) have almost zero regulation; 4) even many high ranking government officials don't know about them because they are brotherhood-like closed circles. This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but d…

Implying that Israeli spying on the US is some fringe "shadow government" sub-group of the Israeli government is strange given a long, long history of high profile Israeli spying incidents against the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)

Then there's the time they stole nuclear material from us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_Affair

Then there's the time they slaughtered several dozen US navy and NSA personnel with repeated attacks on an unarmed vessel because they didn't like that we were watching them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

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

#208

Post by brendoelfrendo »

dmix wrote: post #196
maltalex wrote: post #46

I don't understand the focus on NSO in these stories. If U.S State Department personnel in Uganda were shot from an M-16, would the headline mention "an American arms manufacturer"? No, because it's ridiculous. For better or worse, NSO's product is a weapon. How is it any different from an M-16? Where is the outrage towards the people who used this weapon against the State Department?

It's more like a PMC ala Wagner than selling an M-16. They essentially run the technical side of operations and provide the talent.

Ah, I like this analogy. NSO's role isn't so much selling a weapon as it is selling "cyberwarfare as a service."

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

#209

Post by throaway46546 »

linschn wrote: post #193
dqpb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) have almost zero regulation; What would shadow government regulation look like?

Maybe stop funding them, for a start? Congressional oversight used to be a thing. Snowden showed the NSA lied to congress. No heads rolled.

Imagine all the dirt the NSA has on congress.

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

#210

Post by montblanc »

octopoc wrote: post #95
maltalex wrote: post #46

I don't understand the focus on NSO in these stories. If U.S State Department personnel in Uganda were shot from an M-16, would the headline mention "an American arms manufacturer"? No, because it's ridiculous. For better or worse, NSO's product is a weapon. How is it any different from an M-16? Where is the outrage towards the people who used this weapon against the State Department?

Unlike an M-16, hacks can be conducted remotely, they can be used to plant evidence, conduct blackmail, and lots of other things where most people would never know a hack was involved. Also, there's outrage towards NSO because Israel is supposedly an American ally. Israel needs American support, and yet Israel freely allows Israeli corporations to sell services American enemies. And this isn't an isolated company--th…

Uganda is not an American enemy.
Post reply on HN