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The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

arstechnica.com

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Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#51

Post by seoaeu »

jprd wrote: post #46
kingcharles wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right, and I don't think anyone else has made that point. The problem was the spies they tried to fuck with were American spies and American wasn't going to stand for that. As you say, NSO are now just a toy, and if they are destroyed thanks to this, no-one is going to give a fuck.

I cannot see a world in which use of NSO tech is legitimate. Get a court order to tap the phone line, etc. How can usage of a Mossad / IDF tool be considered legitimate? Just because the ruling party in a state decides so, doesn't mean this has any bearing on human rights or _legitimacy_. China is eradicating Uyghur culture and running for-profit concentration camps. These are legitimate uses of their Governmental po…

Countries conducting espionage is a well established and has been done for centuries. At the same time, the CIA doesn't get court orders when they want to listen in on FSB agents, nor vice versa. I don't see why Uganda should be held to different standards or why partnering with an Israeli company instead of developing the tools themselves should matter here.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#52

Post by guytv »

Advanced technology was once held mainly in the hands of governments. In recent years, corps and mega-corps are getting far more advanced technology than the government has. For governments, this means loss of power. So governments around the world use whatever means they have to prevent such technologies to prolifirate. US govm't tried to stop the export of strong encryption. The it shutdown Facebooks crypto-currency - to prevent FB to have its own global-dollar. That's why the US just waited for the right time to end the party where dollars could buy you cyber abilities only reserved to the NSA and CIA.

It's not about civil rights, it's ont about money laundring, its just about the US trying to keep ahead of everyone else.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#54

Post by stefan_ »

optimalsolver wrote: post #25

Were the US officials that Uganda was spying on diplomats, or "diplomats"?

Surely if they were "diplomats" we shouldn't need Apple to send them a mail to know their phones are compromised (by such an obvious trojan, even)?

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#56

Post by _jal »

fouc wrote: post #39

>when Google reverse-engineered the hack used against American diplomats in Uganda, they found an elegant, tiny piece of code that adapted software from 1990s Xerox machines to fit a so-called Turing machine — essentially a complete computer — into a single GIF file. LOL at describing PDFs as "adapted software from 1990s Xerox machines" https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-deep-dive-i...

They were talking about JBIG2, not PDF.

JBIG2 has been in the news periodically for a different sort of problem - you can't trust it to accurately represent what was scanned:

https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#57

Post by [deleted] »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #30
cjfd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen if it was a US company? Probably they would be forbidden from selling anything outside of the US. Remember what the US did with crypto exports for decades? Next, if you tried to investigate anything that it was doing, you would be persecuted relentlessly by the US government. Note what happened to Julian Assange. It really is not like the US government is a nice organization or anything.

> What would happen if it was a US company? Probably they would be forbidden from selling anything outside of the US. That's just false. The NSA bought the Swiss company Crypto AG and has been selling backdoored crypto devices all over the world for decades before being found out.

[deleted]

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#58

Post by lazyasciiart »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #30
cjfd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen if it was a US company? Probably they would be forbidden from selling anything outside of the US. Remember what the US did with crypto exports for decades? Next, if you tried to investigate anything that it was doing, you would be persecuted relentlessly by the US government. Note what happened to Julian Assange. It really is not like the US government is a nice organization or anything.

> What would happen if it was a US company? Probably they would be forbidden from selling anything outside of the US. That's just false. The NSA bought the Swiss company Crypto AG and has been selling backdoored crypto devices all over the world for decades before being found out.

That doesn't seem like a similar enough story to contradict anything here.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#59

Post by azinman2 »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #38
azinman2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but listening in to people sleeping can elucidate what might be on their mind! Once you go conspiracy there’s no end to what seems possible…

Its not conspiracy, if you consume a few grams of lecithin before bed, your dreams will be based on what you saw just before bed. So if you can use a phone to make sounds or says things to someone in their sleep at pertinent moments, you could start having a conversation with them in their sleep or just trigger them to see what they say! You should try it, its fascinating!

I’ve recorded my sleep many a time. What I say is entirely random and garbage. To suggest someone hacked your phone to listen to your dreams requires extraordinary proof, and would also be far less effective than listening to your day while you’re actually awake. And even then, you need quite a high bar of proof. This is only been documented to occur for high value targets, so unless you’re one of them, I’d be far less concerned.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#60

Post by HillRat »

pm90 wrote: post #3

This is an interesting industry. > “We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” he told the friend, complaining that some clients had asked to shift their contracts to lesser-known rivals, according to a person familiar with the conversation. I guess if you have this perspective, you want to maximize revenues and IPO before your product gets misused and invites US sanctions. I wonder what the reaction would be…

A US company wouldn't be selling a CCL-restricted product to a foreign state without going through USG review -- or at least, they'd get to do that once, before DOJ comes in with the search warrants.
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