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The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

nytimes.com

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Re: The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

#81

Post by lossolo »

rotrot wrote: post #48
Veserv wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Since you say I am underestimating according to your experience can you supply a, in your opinion, 68% confidence interval estimate for the cost or effort required to purchase or develop a zero click iOS exploit (i.e. give a general range for the median case). Reasonable forms for a sufficiently quantified answer include, but are not limited to: 1. A numerical value to purchase from a broker. 2. A numerical val…

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Anyone has copy of the answers? Seems that it was interesting but was edited.

Re: The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

#82

Post by matthewdgreen »

ramesh31 wrote: post #72
matthewdgreen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that’s kind of the definition of a weapon. The atomic bomb was also just the codification of some ideas into a physical machine.

>The atomic bomb was also just the codification of some ideas into a physical machine. No, it wasn't. It was the product of the entire industrial capacity of the United States. The amount of Deuterium required for a fission bomb took years of labor by hundreds of thousands of people to produce. The "ideas" were worthless without the physical infrastructure and industrial capacity to carry out the construction. Softwa…

I see. So if we could have developed a nuclear bomb for $200 and destroyed a city using it, it wouldn’t have been a weapon? I don’t understand the reason cost is being brought into the definition.

Re: The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

#84

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

For some reason, the only previously unpublished piece of info in this long article is in the last paragraph.

When they first presented their case against NSO, Facebook’s lawyers thought they had evidence to disprove one of the Israeli company’s longtime claims — that the Israeli government strictly prohibits the firm from hacking any phone numbers in the United States. In court documents, Facebook asserted it had evidence that at least one number with a Washington area code had been attacked. Clearly someone was using NSO spyware to monitor an American phone number.

But the tech giant didn’t have the entire picture. What Facebook didn’t appear to know was that the attack on a U.S. phone number, far from being an assault by a foreign power, was part of the NSO demonstrations to the F.B.I. of Phantom — the system NSO designed for American law-enforcement agencies to turn the nation’s smartphones into an “intelligence gold mine.”

Re: The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

#85

Post by Veserv »

lossolo wrote: post #81
rotrot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

Anyone has copy of the answers? Seems that it was interesting but was edited.

From memory it was approximately:

1a. $2M for something. Maybe a messenger/important app?

1b. $3.5-4M for zero click in default install (sandbox escape + local privilege escalation)

2. $20M for high level individual talent for a firm like NSO with a $250M revenue/$150M expenses.

3. $400k for a senior engineer. $250k-500k spot bonus for a person in the team who finds a zero-click. Some other words.

4. 500% to 1000%. Some other words.

5. 0-2 zero-click on-hand or maybe per year. 1-3 lesser ones in messaging/browsers/etc I think? Some other words.

6. The answer to 5 is sparse enough that statistics do not really apply.

7. 7-15 months.

Re: The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

#86

Post by touristtam »

Sporktacular wrote: post #75

Not often we get to witness such a clear spread of a new technological evil in, what, half a generation? The potential this industry has to inexpensively damage nascent democracies and justice efforts is astounding. They've 'democratised' the coup d'état and the absolute cover-up. Shame on all of them.

Just a reminder that Capitalism doesn't care for politics only how much profit can be extracted from it.

Re: The battle for the world’s most powerful cyberweapon

#87

Post by Sporktacular »

touristtam wrote: post #86
Sporktacular wrote: post #75

Not often we get to witness such a clear spread of a new technological evil in, what, half a generation? The potential this industry has to inexpensively damage nascent democracies and justice efforts is astounding. They've 'democratised' the coup d'état and the absolute cover-up. Shame on all of them.

Just a reminder that Capitalism doesn't care for politics only how much profit can be extracted from it.

And ethics doesn't care about economic systems. If capitalism is part of the problem here then capitalism needs to be addressed too.
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