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Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

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Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#61
post #56
post #4

“Poland and the demon in democracy” https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/poland-and-the-demon-in-d...

> The former top European Union official’s party only won 30% of the vote compared to the 36% of his incumbent conservative, EU-skeptical rivals, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, but was nonetheless able to assemble a coalition of leftists to take power. Just one party in this coalition is from the left. The rest is decidedly centre to centre-right. Hard to treat this piece seriously.

Doesn’t even matter, coalition governments are a central feature of parliamentary democracies with roughly proportional elections.

Anyone who can form a coalition can rightfully govern. Those who get the most votes don’t automatically get to govern.

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#62
post #46
post #43

Just bear in mind that this is the same Polish PM whose former government set World record making requests to Apple for data from 241 509 iPhones in 1H2015… (out of 300 thousand total request from the entire World)… Quarter milion iPhones in 2015 in Poland was basically everyone who counts in public life. https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2015-H...

Making requests is one thing, because Apple can deny the request, while using Pegasus simply hacks the phone without oversight.

Thank God we have Apple to uphold civic society and due process in Poland

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#63
post #49
post #43

Just bear in mind that this is the same Polish PM whose former government set World record making requests to Apple for data from 241 509 iPhones in 1H2015… (out of 300 thousand total request from the entire World)… Quarter milion iPhones in 2015 in Poland was basically everyone who counts in public life. https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2015-H...

from your linked document: *Poland: predominately requests from Customs and Revenue Authorities

KAS is under government control MoF, not an independent institution, right?

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#64

Fuck NSO Group.

Why? It serves no purpose, if it wasn't them, it would be New NSO Group instead. So long as these vulnerabilities exist, they're going to be exploited. Every time they find an exploit it's a moment of pure genius. With every new baseband and every new OS update there's a good chance that they find they have no answer. I don't blame the hackers in the slightest. It's also not useful to blame governments. More useful t…

What? Pegasus is not enabled by modem vulnerabilities. The primary vulnerabilities used on iOS phones are in Apple designed and implemented components and the primary vulnerabilities used on Android phones are in Google designed and implemented components.

The problem is not that Google and Apple did not have the opportunity to secure the vulnerable components. The problem is that their best teams with thousands of people and billions of dollars are completely incapable of designing systems secure against moderately resourced attackers.

They openly admit that their systems are defenseless against attackers with resources. Every single time their security is completely invalidated they make press releases like: "It was a unprecedented attack using never-before-seen techniques by highly sophisticated attackers." implying that they can not be blamed because look, they were "highly sophisticated" and it was "unprecedented" there is no way we could stop that. Even though every single attack is described that way.

You would be hard pressed to find a single technically competent security developer in any of these organizations which would claim their systems could stop their systems being totally and utterly compromised and their security completely invalidated by a single, individual, lone competent hacker with a year to work on attacks. A team of 3, forget about it. That is only in the low millions of dollars to completely invalidate their entire security story for all hundreds of millions to billions of systems worldwide.

No, the problem is not a lack of accessibility, effort, resources, or focus. The problem is that all of these large companies have failed for literal decades to develop systems secure against competent attackers. And the entire time they have been intentionally deceiving the public into thinking they can even though they know and admit they can not.

The solution is to stop believing these perennial incompetents and liars until they present solid, auditable proof. At least then they can not suck all of the air out of the room from people who actually know what they are doing.

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#65
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The NSO is only supplying a product for which there is insatiable demand from every government. There is also insatiable demand for nuclear weapons, but if a private company from the US started selling them to random dictatorships, yes, I would blame them.

Poland isn’t a dictatorship, it’s an EU member state and a member of NATO. Also let’s not compare malware/spyware to nuclear weapons. Poland can get their hands on any weapon or controlled technology they pretty much want.

Pegasus is notoriously sold to more than 40 countries worldwide, among them a fair share of dictatorships: Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, (Hungary?), Bahrain, Russia...

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#66
post #42
post #11

"and illegally" is strangely missing from the title

That's no doubt an artifact of HN's 80 char title limit, which required the submitter to shorten the title. Edit: I've changed it now.

Is 80 still the hard limit? I see it warns if too long when typing in a new submission. However, HN guidelines don't provide guidance in what to do if the title is too long.

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#67
post #63
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from your linked document: *Poland: predominately requests from Customs and Revenue Authorities

KAS is under government control MoF, not an independent institution, right?

KAS has very specific mandate though and doesn't share with other institutions - they tend to go after very specific things that they do know how to get.

Not that it's a crystal clear institution, but everything will go around taxes and customs with them, even when it's something rotten.

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Usage of Pegasus means all intercepts are on the servers in Israel Wait, seriously? Any sources on that? I find it hard to believe that any government would spend $$$ on a security tool that doesn't allow on-prem installation and instead beams all your surveillance to another country.

NATO countries' governments and military use phones with encrypted communications to which the US has the keys. This fact was made available during investigation into the Polish government plane crash in Smolensk. The US authorities have access to the recordings of the calls made by the late president of Poland, but said they would not make them available. source: https://www.money.pl/archiwum/wiadomosci/artykul/usa;…

>NATO countries' governments and military use phones with encrypted communications to which the US has the keys.

What do these phones look like and who manufactures them?

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#69
post #40
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious about this statement too, seems there’s evidence that they don’t and the customer is the data handler: https://www.edps.europa.eu/system/files_en?file=2023-01/0221... top of page 4. I guess this is all according to NSO claims. I’d like to see evidence otherwise!

That was one of the claims during parliamentary committee investigating it.

[deleted]

Re: Poland’s PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware

#70
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you trust anything a spyware company says? This is not a tongue-in-cheek question.

It is a lot of money lost if it comes out that you lied to some of your biggest clients.

Not if your customers are reticent to even admit being a customer in the first place.
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