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WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
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Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#22I don't understand why the NSO Group, and by extension Israel, has not been sanctioned over this spyware. It's a dangerous company that sells tools ripe for abuse to some of the West's worst anti-democractic enemies.
Israel has long served a kind of cut-out role for delivering weapons to states with atrocious 'Western values' records but which are compliant with US corporate interests. Equatorial Guinea was one such example, with dictator Obiang and his ExxonMobil contract. Steve Coll mentions this in "Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power" (2012):
> "Fortunately for Obiang, coup-prone African governments rolling in oil but lacking in arms and intelligence to defend their bounty had a discrete alternative to the Pentagon and C.I.A. for defense support: Israel. Quietly, the Bush Administration encouraged Obiang to enter into security and commercial ties with Tel Aviv."
Azerbaijan is a similar example as US weapons sales were banned for human rights abuse reasons. A Wikileaked US State Dept cable stated (2009) "Through its close relations with Israel, Azerbaijan gets a level of access to the quality weapon systems it needs to develop its army that it can not obtain from the U.S. and Europe due to various legal limitations..."
If the dictatorial government funnels the oil money into the Western banking system, then the US turns a blind eye to this kind of thing (e.g. Saudi and UAE use of Pegasus to persecute pro-democracy activists) and if not, it's sanctions and regime change time.
Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#23I don't understand why the NSO Group, and by extension Israel, has not been sanctioned over this spyware. It's a dangerous company that sells tools ripe for abuse to some of the West's worst anti-democractic enemies.
Peace and "defense" are marketing. Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex and it's growing power. It's mainly not "the wests" enemies contracting NSO, it is the west.
-1 because this comment made me feel bad. The US and its client states have never done anything to deserve this reputation, and to suggest that they have is frankly nothing short of unpatriotic. The Lavon Affair never happened.
Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#24> Initially, the NSO sought to block all discovery in the lawsuit, "due to various US and Israeli restrictions," but that blanket request was denied. Interesting approach. The court could probably care less about Israeli restrictions as it's a different country. Officially US govt blacklisted Pegasus https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/us-blacklists-ma... . However, I wouldn't be surprised if some US spy agen…
couldn't* care less
Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#25This is why I don't want to work in cyber security. You are dealing with dangerous people.
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Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Peace and "defense" are marketing. Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex and it's growing power. It's mainly not "the wests" enemies contracting NSO, it is the west.
-1 because this comment made me feel bad. The US and its client states have never done anything to deserve this reputation, and to suggest that they have is frankly nothing short of unpatriotic. The Lavon Affair never happened.
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Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#27Is Signal one of the other platforms they mention?
I think they mention every platform for marketing because once the device is rooted, they can extract data from any app. That doesn’t mean the vulnerability was in the app mentioned, nor that it was the fault of an app at all.
At the end of the day, it’s between platforms (specifically iOS and Apple) and these exploit devs/traders, afaiu. That’s why Apple hates them. For better or worse, putting a torch under Apple’s ass is probably a good thing for the rest of us.
OTOH, you could argue that Apple should be more of top of these things and reward the security researchers better. Things are better than 20y ago, but still it’s probably more lucrative to sell exploits to these shady actors than to scrape the floor for peanuts in hope that mega corps will reward their discoveries.
Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
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Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#29I don't understand why the NSO Group, and by extension Israel, has not been sanctioned over this spyware. It's a dangerous company that sells tools ripe for abuse to some of the West's worst anti-democractic enemies.
NSO has been: https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-adds-foreign-compani...
Ah, didn't know that, thanks. It seems NSO Group are still alive and kicking in spite of this.
Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code
#30Can anyone explain this case?
Why would a US court have any jurisdiction over a foreign Israeli spyware vendor that has already been blacklisted by the US government?
And why would Israel send their spyware source code to WhatsApp even if they lose the case?