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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

#321

Post by stuntkite »

fmajid wrote: post #256
BrianOnHN wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the consequence for destabilizing governments worldwide? Logistics headaches? Got it.

The NSO guys are in it purely for the money. IIRC there was a deal on the cards for some investors to buy the company that fell apart because of the sanctions, so the NSO founders can no longer cash out. As for destabilizing governments, they are doing the opposite, they are helping authoritarian governments worldwide crack down on journalists and dissidents, or murder them in the case of Saudi Arabia and Jamal Khash…

The episode of Darknet Diaries on NSO was very informative.

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/

I knew about Israeli security consultancies putting out stringrays and phone cracking tools, but I did not know about NSO. He has a good interview with one of the lead devs.

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

#322

Post by Veserv »

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…

Here you go. Phone based on a high robustness microkernel.

https://hoyosintegrity.com/products-2/hoyos-phone-2/

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

#323

Post by justin66 »

Eelongate wrote: post #248
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that remains to be seen Oh man, for purely comical purposes I would love to see NSO actually believe that.

In principle, America could drop Hellfire R9X sword missiles through the cars of every NSO employee. In practice, would American politicians have the nerve to go to war with NSO, when NSO probably infected all their phones years ago? How much dirt do they have on American politicians?

> In principle, America could drop Hellfire R9X sword missiles through the cars of every NSO employee.

The next step isn't to blow them up, the next step is to sue them.

I just assume the IDF and Shin Bet would like to be the only ones who blow up civilians in Israel, but I can't think of a single reason why the Israeli government would oppose an extradition request if they were presented with evidence of cyber-whatever.

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

#324

Post by runarberg »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #207
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…

I come from a country which US intelligence has many times been caught spying on its officials as recently as 2009[1]. A more recent scheme involved recruiting a convicted criminal with proven antisocial personality disorder[2] to spy on Julian Assanges friends. This has been known about since the 1960s at least among Icelandic communists and other left wing individuals. But until really recently (like 10 years ago) the government has been very sympathetic to this spying.

For some reason I feel like the US government officials probably share the sentiment of their Icelandic colleagues of old. These immoral activists that obviously step out of line, but the only thing that bothers the US officials is that they got caught. But even then it is not such a big deal.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/19/nsa-surve...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurdur_Thordarson

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

#325

Post by justin66 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #115

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 t…

> Why is Reuters, an old guard by any account, concerned?

Meta-concerns about "the media" are not relevant to every story that is ever published.

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

#327

Post by runarberg »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #282
ginja wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spies on its European allies all the time, and I'm sure they spy on Israel too, so that's not super surprising. As for the USS Liberty, some do argue that it was intentional, but both the Israelis and Americans ended up agreeing that it was a mistake. The US is no stranger to such mistakes either, even more egregious ones like when they killed close to 300 civilians aboard a regular passenger flight following…

And the European allies spy on the USA, rinse and repeat.

I don’t think so. If they do, it is either a) not nearly on they same scale, or they b) are way more competent about it and less likely to get caught.

Given the general incompetence of governments in general (Europe is no exception) I doubt it is (b).

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

#329

Post by hellbannedguy »

vorpalhex wrote: post #277
Eelongate wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the iceberg is coincidentally only as deep as what we've presently heard? That we didn't have the full story yesterday, but today we definitely do? Well I hope you're right, but I don't think you are.

Well how do you know the NSO hasn't replaced the sitting US President with a very convincing android? I mean, they are a very skilled set of engineers. You seem to grant them being able to hold onto very powerful secrets and use them for active blackmail. You even believe they've been operating actively against the US government for several years. If they can do all that, then replacing the sitting US president with…

I doubt we will see convincing androids in any of our lifetimes.

How about this senerio though.

I heard our President yak about his accomplishments this morning. I was half asleep, but felt his voice sounded different. I thought maybe just hoarse, or I was wrong about his voice.

I was thinking about his appearance. I don't know if I would recognize him if he walked up to me on the street without the suit.

Ok the Hollywood script.

Joe biden goes into a hospital. He only wants certain Secret Service personnel around.

His boy, and wife, are tragically killed in a plane accident.

Joe decides he needs grieving time.

The year before all this happens the NSO finds a lookalike Joe Biden, and performs all the necessary surgery.

A few more weeks pass, and the switch is performed. The real Joe is gone. The fake one is in power.

Then China, or Russia, have control.

(I guess if there was suspicion--the FBI could perform a dna test though? I think someone did this in a movie.)

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

#330

Post by tremon »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #207
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…

The parent comment doesn't imply that it was the Israeli government that was doing the spying (and neither does the article), only that Israel delivered the tools. Who's to say this wasn't the CIA keeping tabs on the NSA, or the NSA using foreign tools for plausible deniability?
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