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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

#121

Post by danny_codes »

fortran77 wrote: post #115

You would think Apple, the company that makes the platform which enables all this, would be held accountable too. But people turn a blind eye to their false claims of a secure platform.

If I leave my bike locked up outside my office and come back to find it's been stolen with a handheld circular saw, I don't see how that's my fault. I implemented a reasonable level of security, but there's not much I can do against a circular saw.

iOS is massive. Operating systems are massive, from an attack-surface perspective. NSO is hiring out of the Israeli intelligence pool: these are among the best security engineers in the world. They don't always find exploits (IIRC there are some versions of iOS they don't have hacks for at a given time), but the game is in their favor, simply because the OS is, well, the size of an OS.

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

#122

Post by dotancohen »

filoeleven wrote: post #90
kshacker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot see a world in which use of NSO tech is legitimate. Get a court order to tap the phone line, etc. In general, I am against government overreach, so I agree with a lot of what you said. However, let us say I have a court order to surveil person X - how am I ever going to get all the information when they could be communicating via a phone call, SMS, iMessage, whatsapp, gmail, facebook messenger, signal, tel…

Half of those services will happily share all of that person’s data when handed a warrant. Some don’t even require that much. On the flipside, a snooper will always have to do a monumental and maybe impossible amount of work to break a one-time pad by chipping away at the security that surrounds it. What makes security tech fundamentally different? Why should it be easy to break? A warrant lets someone search my belo…

  > A warrant lets someone search my belongings; it does not compel me
  > to give law enforcement the information they are seeking.
This is the issue. An investigator's limited permission to search a specific aspect of one's belongings does not infringe upon one's right to be secure in the remainder of his belongings. At least, not in the context of nations which have explicitly granted that right.

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

#123

Post by saiya-jin »

post_from_work wrote: post #112
Sporktacular wrote: post #98

“We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” (Hulio) told the friend" This was clearly the plan all along. Such companies live and die by their low profiles. Was probably not the founders' first such company nor will it be their last. Next step will be to close up, take the contacts, clients, capital, the lessons learned and the cream of the staff to whatever mercenary, unethical piece of crap they make next.…

"This is why killing the industry as a whole is so important. It'll mean going after the owners, suppliers and employees/contractors with naming/shaming, coordinated sanctions, criminal charges, designated persons lists etc. until their reputations are trash. No bank would fund it, no parters would supply it and no one with any talent would ever contemplate such a catastrophic career move in future." And no governmen…

Yet here we are, useful or not. I applaud these kind of movements, since this company's actions were clearly amoral and they supported anybody with enough cash, mass murderer or not.

All those actions mentioned by OP dissuade talent, since when you are on the top you have tons of interesting choices. Why work somewhere you are actually ashamed of to even mention. Why on top of that working for amoral goals that make world a much worse place, innocent people get killed just because of your work etc.

Those talents will find some work easily. Maybe even for competition. But its the right move, the more the better.

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

#124

Post by MicCheck »

ggm wrote: post #102

If you replace your handset, keep your SIM, how does NSO recapture you? I don't understand how rich powerful technocrats get stung so often: surely the path out is to swap device and move on? I should be clear I do believe they are being recaptured. I just don't understand how. In the pre digital world, most phone steals were inside jobs: somebody leaked info leading to a voicemail hack or a stingray type cell listen…

NSO used a zero-click exploit. Swapping the device for another vulnerable iPhone wouldn't put up much of a hurdle. They'd just a message with the exploit an reinfect the phone in under 30 seconds. Changing the phone and SIM would only work until the new phone number became known. For high-value public targets (with lot of contacts) it porobably won't take long until the new number leaks again.

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

#126

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Sporktacular wrote: post #98

“We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” (Hulio) told the friend" This was clearly the plan all along. Such companies live and die by their low profiles. Was probably not the founders' first such company nor will it be their last. Next step will be to close up, take the contacts, clients, capital, the lessons learned and the cream of the staff to whatever mercenary, unethical piece of crap they make next.…

The industry being comprehensively destroyed: that won't happen. Too useful to the wannabe masters of the world in the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and, well, I guess the true "richest people in the world": despot leaders of large economies.

A better question is that while these companies are basically cyber weapons companies, what do the truly big players have: the US and China? We got a glimpse with the viruses targeting hard drive firmware and others, but maybe they are lazy because they get to enforce backdoors.

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

#127

Post by simonh »

pzo wrote: post #79
profstasiak wrote: post #14

Right now we have mini crisis in Poland connected with this US/NSO war. One prosecutor, who is fighting for indepenend judiciary and against her political boss, head prosecutor Minister of Justice, smaller party Coalition member, got notification her iPhone has been hacked multiple time by Pegasus. She angried the rulling coalition, after she wanted to investigate illegal vote by mail election, that didnt take place…

There is such a polarization right now in Poland between society that let's maybe don't put politics here. I don't like both the opposition and the ruling party but I try to at least read both sides of the story. You are definitely presenting very biased point of view here

> You are definitely presenting very biased point of view here

It’s not biased if the information is accurate, did the hacking take place or not?

That doesn’t mean I’m against your side, or for their side. I have no idea, I’m not polish. Both sides must account for their actions, but one side doing bad things doesn’t in any way justify the other doing bad things. That would be what-about-ism. If the ruling party in Poland used Pegasus to hack opposition phones, that’s scandalous and entirely on-topic for a thread about Pegasus.

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

#128

Post by rswail »

kgonza wrote: post #110
ashtonkem wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t hazard a guess about the exact number, but spies being given diplomatic cover (and diplomats spying) has been the norm for centuries. A huge chunk of Cold War spy craft was about diplomatic personnel trying to evade their followers in order to meet with their contacts without exposing them.

A huge chunk of the American intelligence leaked by WikiLeaks was collected by "diplomats".

The job of diplomats is to collect intelligence and represent their government.

Whether they collect it overtly or covertly is the issue here.

The USG had an "agreement" with Israel that NSO products wouldn't be used against the USG. Uganda did.

So the USG is making it clear to Israel that they have to rein in NSO and other "private enterprise" spy product providers.

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

#129

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

riffraff wrote: post #119
profstasiak wrote: post #14

Right now we have mini crisis in Poland connected with this US/NSO war. One prosecutor, who is fighting for indepenend judiciary and against her political boss, head prosecutor Minister of Justice, smaller party Coalition member, got notification her iPhone has been hacked multiple time by Pegasus. She angried the rulling coalition, after she wanted to investigate illegal vote by mail election, that didnt take place…

Hungary also had a scandal about the abuse of pegasus by the government against the opposition and independents. As usual, the EU and the powerful countries who make business there have not made much about it. People complain about the west enabling the Chinese communist leadership, but it's the same for every corrupt government.

> As usual, the EU and the powerful countries who make business there have not made much about it.

You do realise the only reason Poland and Hungary still have voting rights in the EU are because they mutually block sanctions against the other one, don’t you?

The recovery funds are blocked and the EU executive is suing Poland for violation of the block law. I think they are doing as much as they can. Obviously from the point of view of a citizen of the EU just expelling Poland would be better - the extension championed by the UK was a terrible mistake after all - but it’s sadly not an option.

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

#130

Post by ryanlol »

hermes8329 wrote: post #17
bawolff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pretty big difference between israel, the country spying on somebody out of national interest, and israel allowing what is essentially an arms-dealer based in israel to help random other people spy on countries they are allied with. I highly doubt that israel the country wanted this turn of events, for the simple reason they are not stupid and the cost-benefit ratio of this seems bad for them.

History has shown that the two are tightly involved. Plus it's not like they will ever really be held accountable. Pollard the traitor is a hero to Israel

> Pollard the traitor is a hero to Israel

Well… obviously? How else could Israel treat him?

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