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NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

citizenlab.ca

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Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#751

Post by sneak »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #742
sneak wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't suggest that people should be murdered with drone-launched missiles for making software. Making software is a peaceful act, regardless of what purpose that software serves.

That is not a reasonable position, "peacefully" writing software that you know is to be used to murder and silence other people makes you just as complicit those crimes (definitely an accessory). No better than a getaway driver.

Software is speech (ie protected expression), like writing books.

A getaway driver is involved after the crime is committed. To assign the same level of culpability to a tool-maker would imply that they have the ability to predict the future.

A better example would be a car or firearm manufacturer. How the tool is used is up to the user.

Software doesn't root people's phones, cops and spies do. Someone sent that iMessage, and it wasn't the author of the software.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#752

Post by bjourne »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #707
bjourne wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, every single US soldier who voluntarily stepped on Iraqi soil should be sent to the ICC and tried for war crimes. Some of them would be exonerated for being too stupid/brainwashed to understand that they were committing criminal acts. Others wouldn't. However, those who develop the NSO spyware are middle class Israeli citizens who easily could get a well-paying job at a less repugnant company. There are no exte…

Why the soldiers? They aren't the ones that made the decision. Sure, if they committed war crimes themselves, but for anything else you have to address the people that actually were responsible. Prosecuting soldiers would be futile and certainly no justice. There was a lot of media propaganda to make the war popular. It wasn't at first but it didn't even take half a year until people ate it up. Liberal, conservative,…

Because no American was forced to commit war crimes in Iraq. Yes, participating in an attack on a state that is of no imminent threat to your own is a war crime. Brainwashing may have been an extenuating circumstance, but a lot of Americans were staunchly against the war so how come they let themselves be brainwashed? If I join a gang can I claim to have been brainwashed when most people in fact do not join gangs? People are responsible for their own actions.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#753

Post by ratsmack »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #732
comprev wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes known as "Model-T election" "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."

We have this in the US too but with two colors, both neoliberal.

If only people would come to realize this.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#755

Post by hot_gril »

vxNsr wrote: post #490
hot_gril wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the US barely has an inherent interest in Saudi Arabia. Israel is credited for helping the US "fight terrorism in the Middle East" or maintain those puppets, but really they're just helping us help them. When it comes to things that don't directly benefit Israel, they don't care. Israel has never even fought ISIS for example, the largest recent terrorist threat in the region. And they're allowed to maintain some…

It’s truly shocking how misinformed you are about foreign policy. Israel attempted to maintain some level of neutrality wrt Russia bec when they show preferences, Russia punishes the local Jewish population… which they promptly did as soon as Israel showed any support for Ukraine. Israel shares a ton of intel with the US regarding many of the local terrorist organizations in the ME. Not to mention they’re flying sort…

> And Israel’s absence from that symbolic list was likely a precondition to get many of those Arab and African nations on the list. Israel has ISIS locally so there’s no doubt they’re fighting isis.

Israel has never fought in any battle involving ISIS or carried out any smaller strikes against them. Some others who aren't in the coalition, like Russia, have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_battles_invol... Their operations in Syria have been against regime forces, Hezbollah, and other targets unfriendly towards Israel, not ISIS.

Even if there's significant ISIS presence in Israel (which I've never heard of), it hasn't convinced them to help fight ISIS next door. Their stance is neutral, and they don't pretend otherwise.

> Israel attempted to maintain some level of neutrality wrt Russia bec when they show preferences, Russia punishes the local Jewish population… which they promptly did as soon as Israel showed any support for Ukraine.

I didn't say there was no reason, because obviously there would be, including trade. They have been allowed to stay mostly neutral.

> Finally wrt the Jordan’s west bank: they lost it years ago and it’s so odd you keep calling it that… maybe use the actual name for the area and suddenly Israel’s policy will make sense.

It's the common name for the region used in America, that's all. I truly don't know what other name you had in mind, but whatever you call it, the US has been unhappy with Israel's policy.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#756

Post by empyrrhicist »

withinboredom wrote: post #737
empyrrhicist wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How convenient. It almost makes the dead journalists seem like a win!

From being in MI, collateral damage is a thing... decisions like "if we act on this information, 100 people will be saved but they'll know we know and 1,000s could die. If we let 100 people die, we can save 1,000s" are more common than we'd like.

Two comments:

1. There's no compelling reason to think that this applies in NSO's case, since a lot of the bad actors are geopolitically aligned with "good" governments.

2. One needs only study the cold war briefly to see how the group-think in these unaccountable environments can become completely detached from reality.

Pardon me if I'm skeptical of unaccountable officials making those decisions, and orders of magnitude more skeptical of random people on the internet alluding to such actions as if we can all just assume abuses are justified by unspecified good ends.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#757

Post by black_puppydog »

yard2010 wrote: post #741
acdha wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like we don’t accept that people change, but stigma is useful for both discouraging starting there or staying. If your first job out of college or the military is a defense contractor, oil company, Palantir, etc. a lot of people will sympathize with needing to make rent. If you’re still there a decade later, they’ll assume you’re okay with what they do.

Don't hate the player hate the game. At the end of the day it's the policy makers that choose to look the other way

social norms are part of "the game" and letting people feel in very practical terms that it's not okay to Be Evil(TM) is changing the rules.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#758

Post by black_puppydog »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #704
black_puppydog wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's multiple responses echoing this idea that it's a defense company like any other and thus an evil we'll have to accept exists. That may be true, but these companies (NSO group is by no means worse than the rest of them, just more notorious) have been caught over and over again, selling these "weapons" to dictators, companies, etc, who in turn use them to spy on journalists and activists, not terrorists or anyt…

Same could be said about weapon development. They should be ashamed of themselves, but you are still barking at the wrong tree in the long run. You should demand your own government to outlaw this type of surveillance.

I can do both, actually. Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean it has to be socially acceptable. The two systems are often complementary, and often even contradictory.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#759

Post by mattnewton »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #472
mattnewton wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can type in a contact with an email address by just their name and send an email from iMessage. I have done it to contacts accidentally many times.

I think sending SMS to emails and receiving SMS from emails is a functionality of the mobile network. You should be able to do that in any app that can send/receive SMS. https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1061254/

The point is that iMessage lets you send to any contact and it’s not clear if it will send to their iMessage, which uses email as an identifier, or to their actual email inbox through mms.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#760

Post by black_puppydog »

rmbyrro wrote: post #654
black_puppydog wrote: post #564

Wow, so much discussion of Apple and their software, and so little of NSO group and why they're even a thing. I just want to add this: these people operate pretty much in the open. They're not ashamed of it either, or else they wouldn't put it on their CV: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nso-group/people/ That right there tells me that we as "the tech community" are way too okay with this sort of application of the…

It gives me the impression that you find "the tech community" to be a cohesive collective that has the organization to switch gears in a given direction. I wonder why you expect it to be like that. In reality, "the tech community" is extremely diverse and not cohesive at all. For one example, a large proportion of developers are barely making enough money to pay their most basic bills. They don't have enough mental s…

That right there is why I used the scare quotes. :)
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