U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by azernik » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:12 AM UTC

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.

This isn't War on Terror-adjacent - it's a local repressive government catching embassy workers in a dragnet while spying on the opposition. The full security-state treatment will not be in effect. Still bad, though!

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

#502

Post by azernik » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:13 AM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #135

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?

In National Security contexts, the "get angry at the weapon seller" response is very strongly correlated with how advanced (in technology, power, and scarcity) the weapon is perceived to be. For an "average soldier" weapon, such as an M-16 - $Company isn't likely to catch much grief - unless they're selling a considerable quantity of them, or to an extremely notorious buyer. Similar for a cyberweapon - but an "everyd…

Yup. If decently up to date surface-to-air missiles were fired at State Department helicopters in X country, the US would be very very angry at whoever let those get sold so loosely.

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

#503

Post by rapind » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

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?

Really, all you need is a subtle suggestion to the Israeli government that the hundred billions or so dollars they receive from the US every year might be impacted by continued NSO bad publicity.

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

#504

Post by Thorrez » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:18 AM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #471

Cyph0n wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear by now that they have 100% visibility into the entire exploitation chain for all of their customers. Their "official statements" mean nothing.

Well since they do the exploitation on behalf of customers, yes? NSO is very popular with governments that don't have robust domestic intelligence because all you have to do is type a phone number into a web form and in anywhere from an hour to a week you get a point and click GUI for accessing the contents of the phone.

My thought was that the customer runs the server provided by NSO. I though the web form is running off of a webserver in a building owned by the customer.

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

#505

Post by azernik » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

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…

This isn't being sold to an American enemy - in fact, the US sells and donates (!) weapons to the same government. The US doesn't care much about Israel (a Major Non-NATO Ally) or Turkey (a NATO member) selling artillery pieces and APCs to Uganda.

It's all about the specific class of weapon. There are general understandings about who can get sold what weapon without the US getting mad. No radars or surface-to-air missiles for China or Russia or for random tiny dictatorships; but it's totally okay to sell them to India or Latin America. Dumber things like artillery pieces can go anywhere, even places under US sanctions like Myanmar, without crossing any lines. But this isn't written in treaties; it's all implicit understandings and learned patterns of retaliation.

For this new class of weapon, both sides are still feeling out the rules. The US is laying down precedents that put NSO's products much closer to the rules for radars and missiles, while Israel is pushing the limits to see how far the US can live with.

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

#506

Post by azernik » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:24 AM UTC

montblanc wrote: post #211

snowwrestler wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. weapons manufacturers receive a lot of criticism too, both domestically in the U.S. and internationally. The comments here focus on NSO because the story is about what NSO did. This is computer tech kind of community so you’re going to see more computer weapon stories here than stories about improper use of rifles.

The U.S sells super sophisticated weapons such as attack drones, F-15s or nuclear submarines. The tech behind these things is probably super interesting and there's a lot of software involved. If you look at the comments here, around 90% of them don't care about the tech at all but focus on bashing Israel. This isn't a tech story.

And Israel also sells super sophisticated weapons like AWACS radars and surface-to-air missiles.

But there are clear understandings that e.g. nothing goes to China, and no fancy radars go even to untrustworthy places like Myanmar. NSO is still in a gray zone.

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

#507

Post by azernik » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:25 AM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #125

Arguably, this is the real use case Pegasus was designed for. A government (Uganda) that does not have a large and mature civil service that would support a G7 level technical domestic intelligence agency went to market for the tools of one (NSO), so they can keep tabs on foreign intelligence agents (state department staff) in their country. I am not a fan of NSO at all, but this case sounds like they're providing so…

Kind of? It seems like the main use case isn't a country that needs the tools of state-on-state spying; it's a country that needs the tools of Chinese-style domestic surveillance of the political opposition. In most cases where US persons have been targeted with NSO software, it's as part of operations against domestic dissidents, including in this case, where most of the usage was against Ugandan protesters.

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

#508

Post by azernik » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

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…

No.

Israel has zero interest in spying on random embassy employees in Uganda who are working with protesters there. This is purely mercenary stuff, and the US is annoyed that a podunk nowhere country got its hands on first-rate tools.

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

#509

Post by tthun » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:30 AM UTC

rudimental wrote: post #438

tthun wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems surprising given that they spend a fraction Probably by design to “seem to” spend only small amount of money, so that even people who know how to search on google for key facts won’t immediately see their outsized influence. From an nytimes article [0] on this topic and lot of anecdotes on fall outs from taking policy positions against israel (not anti-Semitic) “ Unlike the National Rifle Association, th…

Does this convincingly show AIPAC is "the most powerful political organization in the US"? More than the Democratic party? More than the Republican party? More than these groups? https://largest.org/people/lobbying-groups/

I probably would rephrase parent’s comment as “one of the Most powerful political organization”

As a congressman/woman while considering a policy position against Israel AIPAC is probably the most powerful. Any case comparison of strength between corporate funded lobbyists and an organization with singular ideological is pointless.

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

#510

Post by sennight » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 6:36 AM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #499

sennight wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. know if the Israeli pilots thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship or an American one The sailors would know because they have access to the same information that you do, but a greater incentive to actually do the reading. The Israeli pilots knew it as a US ship, their radio traffic questioning their attack orders - after visually identifying the USS Liberty as a US ship, was recorded and the transcripts…

> This happened several times, so unless the Israeli command center had the memory of a goldfish - they intentionally kept sending attack aircraft until they eventually got a pilot to pull the trigger. Why would they do such a thing? To that point, it's worth noting here friendly fire incidents happen all the time in war, as well as attacks against neutral parties. For instance: the US has bombed its own troops proba…

While I'm not aware of any formal study on the matter, I do remember them going over the subject at length in a forward observer course: the blame for the majority of airstrike blue on blue falling on the grunt calling for fire. It matched my experience as well - to the point that I'd avoid calling in close air support for anything short of a Custard's last stand scenario. This isn't anything like that, a command center continuously calling in attack aircraft on a target repeatedly identified as non-hostile - being put on and taken off of the situation board... unprecedented. Even if my opinion of the command staff was so low as to grant them a "well, maybe you are just that dangerously incompetent" - the lying makes that even harder to believe (technically impossible claims wrt speed and offshore shelling capability).