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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

#601

Post by dredmorbius »

CRConrad wrote: post #596
dredmorbius wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was in response to acts of war and unprovoked attacks against the United States mainland with both military and civillian targets by an individual who had made a specific declaration of war against the U.S.: https://scholar.dickinson.edu/faculty_publications/277/ Comparing that speific case to failure to follow proper criminal procedure and rule of law is disengenuous to the extreme. There are many criticisms wh…

> This was in response to acts of war and unprovoked attacks against the United States mainland with both military and civillian targets by an individual who had made a specific declaration of war against the U.S. Since when do individuals wage "war" on nation-states? (And no, if the only counter-examples you can come up with are 18th-century pirate chiefs and tiny Carribbean islands you've failed. We're talking 21st…

What I wrote was "acts of war" and "specific declaration of war" by the individual in quesiton, with a link to the citation. If you have any issue with established historical fact, that's your own concern.

Decapitating a specific cult of personality has been an effective method of eliminating it. Which also proved successful in the case of AQ.

(Yes, there are new emergent threats and groups, including several previously associated with AQ. I also said that the real world is messy.)

The specific case I was discussing, and I really hope I'm not so vague in my dotage that this wasn't crystal clear, was the 2 May 2011 attack on Osama bin Laden's compound resulting in his death.

What I defended was a specific instance, while acknowledging concerns and issues in other areas. Both you and imbchillyb are displaying a lack of such naunce. The US is vast and contains multitudes, some defensible, some not. It cares little for what I have to say.

Refreshing your memory: https://forum.iwethey.org/forum/post/8257/

obLRPD: Powered by sporks.

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

#602

Post by zaphirplane »

colordrops wrote: post #284
zaphirplane wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing supporting the theory or conclusion

What are you trying to suggest? It's just a typical reflexive reactive response to any comment that the government acts in ways other than presented to you by corporate media. It only takes 3 minutes of google searches or even a daily scan of Hacker News to see endless examples of government corruption and malfeasance. Government employees are only human after all, and there are millions of them. To think this sort o…

Trying to suggest nothing, I am explicitly saying there is nothing in the article to lead a reasonable person down the shadow government and deep state path It seems vanilla spying or vanilla state backed industrial espionage

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

#603

Post by GekkePrutser »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #490
shmatt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine something like this not being in the cloud. The potential for a customer to give their local NSA/8200 the tool to figure out the 0days used is too large Pegasus is only as good as its 0days are secret

Couldn’t you hack your own phone and somehow log traffic to get the exploit used?

Yes you could. You could even use a fake phone which is wired to log everything. A lot of malware attempts to avoid VMs and stimulated environments but the actual 0 day would be before that point.

If a state sponsored party really wants to find these zero days I'm sure they can. I would imagine that this is more like what happened with EternalBlue: it's something they know but don't report because it's useful to them too.

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

#604

Post by GekkePrutser »

refurb wrote: post #516
smoldesu wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a catch-22. Telling other countries not to spy on us while we happily spy on others is a double standard.

You’re taking this all too literally. It’s politics, it’s all a performance. When France was “angry” about Australia buying US nuclear subs and canceling their French contract do you really think that was real? It’s all for show, just like being “angry” at another country spying on you. You do something like “kick out their embassy employees”, then turn around and let new ones come in.

Yeah I think France was pretty pissed actually.

There was no need to just do this for show. Most members of the public don't care about submarine deals. It doesn't make their government more popular.

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

#605

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#606

Post by webmaven »

saagarjha wrote: post #590
webmaven wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be missing something. I don't understand how that's supposed to help.

On other phones the baseband has full control of the AP because it can read and write to all of its physical RAM. With an IOMMU a compromised baseband can only control things inside its small view, rather than completely compromise everything running on your phone.

But doesn't the IOMMU itself become additional attack surface for compromising the kernel? At least, I've seen it suggested that the tradeoff to gain a bit of defense-in-depth isn't necessarily worth it.

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

#607

Post by montblanc »

CRConrad wrote: post #599
montblanc wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont really give a crap about NSO.

> I dont really give a crap about NSO. Then why -- assuming for the moment that the GP is correct -- is the majority of your comments about defending them?

I have a problem with the demonization of Israel going on.

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

#608

Post by refurb »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #604
refurb wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re taking this all too literally. It’s politics, it’s all a performance. When France was “angry” about Australia buying US nuclear subs and canceling their French contract do you really think that was real? It’s all for show, just like being “angry” at another country spying on you. You do something like “kick out their embassy employees”, then turn around and let new ones come in.

Yeah I think France was pretty pissed actually. There was no need to just do this for show. Most members of the public don't care about submarine deals. It doesn't make their government more popular.

Nahh… from what I’ve read, Australia had made it abundantly clear they were pulling out of the French deal. Maybe France was pissed they were excluded, but the “angry” was entirely for show.

The public may not care about submarine deals but France certainly cares about how they are perceived on the world stage.

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

#609

Post by saagarjha »

webmaven wrote: post #606
saagarjha wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On other phones the baseband has full control of the AP because it can read and write to all of its physical RAM. With an IOMMU a compromised baseband can only control things inside its small view, rather than completely compromise everything running on your phone.

But doesn't the IOMMU itself become additional attack surface for compromising the kernel? At least, I've seen it suggested that the tradeoff to gain a bit of defense-in-depth isn't necessarily worth it.

Not having an IOMMU=baseband can access all of the AP's memory.

Having an IOMMU=baseband can only access a small section of memory marked for it, ideally.

Obviously, it's worth implementing this: it turns a baseband compromise from "instant game over" to "might be a problem, but the IOMMU needs to have been set up incorrectly or the code that deals with it needs to have a serious vulnerability".

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

#610

Post by ngcc_hk »

triactual wrote: post #229
smoldesu wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't justify it, but if we're going to take a stance against spyware, we have to take a stance against all spyware. That includes the home-rolled stuff that the NSA pushes out to Apple and Google.

No, we don’t.

Totally agree. There is a difference still between totalitarian countries against its own people with no theoretical way out even, vs USA that still have some way out.
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