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UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

citizenlab.ca

121–130 of 381 posts

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#121

The question is then what phone exists that is immune from this? A flip phone? A Nokia 1011? I might be completely misinformed but seems like SIM card and the underlying OS is vector. What happens if I use a cell phone from late 90s and early 2000s? What is there to hack with those flip phones? JavaME over the wire? What if the cell phone dates even further? Legitimately curious what options is there. Could If you ar…

Print from your phone to a piece of paper. Then use RFC 1149 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1149)-- IP over carrier pigeon. And then use one time pads on each end.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally a lot of voting security experts advocate for paper ballots with electronic counting. It is very robust, efficient, has great fallback, and lots of systems available to keep secure.

The issue is verification - how do you verify the elctronic count was accurate? And if you're going to manually count it to verify the electronic count, then why have the electronic count in the first place?

Because the results can be statistically verified with sampling rather than a full manual recount?

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#123
post #28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context/background to the deal the sale has been stalled for more than a year at that point , the league had decided arbitrarily to put a fitness check and delay(not reject) the deal. Roman, usmanov (minority holder ) and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund are current owners of major clubs before Saudi Arabia . The stalling and later approval has nothing to do with concerns of sportswashing (PL has sold out any morality t…

> Disclaimer : I am a Newcastle fan As-salamu alaykum I reckon the fans of rival clubs will absolutely terrorize you with taunting going forth.

That is par of the course, you are always taunted no matter what your team is or isn’t doing .

I would rather be taunted and be in the conversation rather than fade away as a once good club .

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally a lot of voting security experts advocate for paper ballots with electronic counting. It is very robust, efficient, has great fallback, and lots of systems available to keep secure.

The issue is verification - how do you verify the elctronic count was accurate? And if you're going to manually count it to verify the electronic count, then why have the electronic count in the first place?

A small, statistically representative sample of the paper ballots are counted by hand and compared against the electronic count. If discrepancy arises, a more thorough audit is performed.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#125

I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software" or akin to that. Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.

There are a few thousand kids (and their parents) in Yemen that became all-too-literal "end customers" for American exports of the non-cultural or Apple variety. It's fundamentally the same, except the impact was not metaphorical.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#126
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does having a paper trail generated exactly after voting help? This is the system that's followed in India. I tried to think of ways it could fail but it seemed pretty fool proof as far as I can think. I'm pretty sure I might have missed some corner case

If you're going to have a paper trail for an electronic system, then why not just use the paper system? It's like there's a pro-electronic movement that's looking for every excuse to move to electronic... Ok, so we go electronic. We put in all these extra checks and balances to account for it's downsides. It runs well. People start questioning the need for the checks and balances, since it's so full-proof. So we remo…

I presume costs (wages vs computers) are a significant factor.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#127
post #28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context/background to the deal the sale has been stalled for more than a year at that point , the league had decided arbitrarily to put a fitness check and delay(not reject) the deal. Roman, usmanov (minority holder ) and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund are current owners of major clubs before Saudi Arabia . The stalling and later approval has nothing to do with concerns of sportswashing (PL has sold out any morality t…

> Disclaimer : I am a Newcastle fan As-salamu alaykum I reckon the fans of rival clubs will absolutely terrorize you with taunting going forth.

[deleted]

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#128
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current home secretary, Priti Patel, was forced to resign from her previous (lesser) role as Minister for International Development for secretly (and thus illegally) meeting with Israeli diplomats. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41923007 It is completely unsurprising that there is little care shown by our government.

Doesn't the fact that she had to resign point to the opposite conclusion, namely that these governments are distinct entities with sometimes conflicting interests?

She is now Home Secretary of the UK. She got fired upwards.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#129

I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software" or akin to that. Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.

> let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. There will always be cyberweapon brokers. If not NSO, then someone else. And money talks. Why would there be any oversight? What you need is plausible deniability. I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all. Like, online, for $999 a month or something. Maybe then there will be actual ef…

These products, just like any offensive weapon, aren't quite as useful for defensive purposes, or when used by someone who doesn't do this stuff 24/7.

The justification that "somebody else would have done it" is morally bankrupt, of course, as shown in Nuremberg or the Eichmann trial. It's also just not true: by definition, the alternative would be worse in some way, or it would have been the first choice from the beginning. For simple products, the margin between the knife you are selling and the next-best choice might indeed be small. For nuclear weapons, the marginal product is 100 % less useful, as far as I can tell: there is no other seller. For tanks, you can probably get some Sowjet era relics if you know the right people in the 'stans, which will be significantly worse than western state-of-the-art but not entirely useless.

I'd say Pegasus is somewhere between the tank and the nuclear bomb on that spectrum, right now. Which might well be the point where export controls are most useful, because they also reduce the need and incentive for others to enter the market as buyers and sellers, respectively.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#130
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disclaimer : I am a Newcastle fan As-salamu alaykum I reckon the fans of rival clubs will absolutely terrorize you with taunting going forth.

That is par of the course, you are always taunted no matter what your team is or isn’t doing . I would rather be taunted and be in the conversation rather than fade away as a once good club .

Alright well I hope you have an explosive season.
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