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WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

arstechnica.com

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Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#111

Post by saagarjha »

kevinbowman wrote: post #102
saagarjha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people working on the defensive side are famous, sometimes even more famous than those who do offensive work. Take, for example, Google Project Zero, or the numerous people on “infosec Twitter” who are almost invariably doing defensive work. People who do exploit development tend to be a lot more quiet about what they do and where they work.

I think Project Zero would count as offensive work in this regard; they are actively trying to find problems in other systems, rather than trying to stop other people trying to find problems in their systems.

Project Zero is an offensive team doing defensive work.

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#112

Post by netsharc »

xxpor wrote: post #47
jevoten wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "Because the NSO group handles dollars" related to "the court could order any assets the US can get their hands on seized"? Presumably, if they were getting paid in bars of gold, the US could seize those too, if they could get their hands on them, no? On the other hand, if they were paid in US dollars, but in cash, that wouldn't establish jurisdiction, nor could it be seized, if the transfer happened outside U…

The US government has jurisdiction over all US dollars. That's how sanctions work.

Geez, no? Sanctions work only if the sanctioning entity has power. If the US govt sanctions you, they can tell all banks in the world that if they touch your (virtual) money they'll be sanctioned too. If some podunk dictatorship no one did business with announced "Any bank doing business with xxpor will be barred from working in our country!" then many banks will probably say "Fine, you're a tiny economy that we don't have anyone that does business with a business in your country anyway, so you can take that sanctions and shove it".

Ironically paper money is the way to "escape" sanctions, because anyone around the world knows that that 100 dollar bill can be exchanged for goods and services. And it doesn't even have to involve a bank, just another person who recognizes the value of that paper, in a chain of transactions. Depending on the hassle you may need to pay more..

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#113

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

hackerlight wrote: post #66
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't care less if there's a group of people misusing the phrase, logically "I could care less" means the exact opposite of "I couldn't care less". The majority of the world is not American, and presumably the majority of Americans don't use the incorrect phrase, so why should the rest of the world cater for a minority within a minority by putting their butchered phrase on equal footing with the correct phrase?

It doesn't mean the opposite, though. For a formal linguistic example, see the concept of compound words. The meaning of the compound word does not equal the meaning of any of the constituent words. Often because the definition of the constituent words has drifted over time while usage of the compound word remained fixed. You may unilaterally think that's wrong because you wish to impose a set of rules on language th…

> You may unilaterally think that's wrong because you wish to impose a set of rules on language that others don't share, but that's not how meaning works.

'A set of rules' is called grammar. It may have arisen organically and out of 'shared consensus' but today languages only make sense when we maintain that grammar.

Imagine if the positions of the words in the above sentence were randomly jumbled up. It'd make no sense at all.

English is somewhat more lax than other languages about grammar (stemming from its extremely wide usage) while still being able to get the point through, but striving for correct grammar should always be a goal, even if 'the point has got through'.

Many other stricter and older Indo-European languages that haven't experienced as many changes as English has, can be machine-parsed like a programming language. Sanskrit and Latin come to mind.

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#115

Post by jmkni »

klabb3 wrote: post #27
LispSporks22 wrote: post #14

Is 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…

I guess that once the device is rooted, they can just take screenshots/record the screen without the user knowing, so the specifics of how any particular app works don't matter?

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#116

Post by forty »

omneity wrote: post #96
cortesoft wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And logically, flammable and inflammable mean the exact opposite, but here we are.

Not quite. "in" here as a prefix is not a negation thing but to _do_ something like "en" in "enhance" or "encapsulate". The word's actual latin root is "inflammare" which means to put something _in_ flames. The subject is the one doing the burning and it's transitive. Flammable on the hand comes from "flammare", which means for something to catch fire, and is intransitive instead, i.e. the subject is the one catching…

In French we don't have flammable, only _inflammable_ (meaning that it CAN catch fire). And the opposite is _ininflammable_ ^^

Something in flames is "enflammé" (there is the en- prefix ^^).

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#117

Post by Propelloni »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #113
hackerlight wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't mean the opposite, though. For a formal linguistic example, see the concept of compound words. The meaning of the compound word does not equal the meaning of any of the constituent words. Often because the definition of the constituent words has drifted over time while usage of the compound word remained fixed. You may unilaterally think that's wrong because you wish to impose a set of rules on language th…

> You may unilaterally think that's wrong because you wish to impose a set of rules on language that others don't share, but that's not how meaning works. 'A set of rules' is called grammar. It may have arisen organically and out of 'shared consensus' but today languages only make sense when we maintain that grammar. Imagine if the positions of the words in the above sentence were randomly jumbled up. It'd make no se…

The GP is talking semantics, you are talking syntax. We are failing the language game here.

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#118

Post by sjy »

andyferris wrote: post #70
bluGill wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is typically the case. If you commit a crime and flee to a different country, where you go will arrest you and turn you over to the country that you did the crime in. there are many treaties on this. It gets complex, some countries will not turn criminals over if the death pentalty is would be used for example. However in general if you commit a crime you can't flee to a different country. countries like north K…

The one that gets me is when someone does something on the internet that is legal in their country, but not in another, and the other tries to extradite and charge the person as a criminal. If I run an Internet-facing server, where is it deemed to be? Everywhere?

That generally doesn’t happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_criminality

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#119

Post by hackerlight »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #113
hackerlight wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't mean the opposite, though. For a formal linguistic example, see the concept of compound words. The meaning of the compound word does not equal the meaning of any of the constituent words. Often because the definition of the constituent words has drifted over time while usage of the compound word remained fixed. You may unilaterally think that's wrong because you wish to impose a set of rules on language th…

> You may unilaterally think that's wrong because you wish to impose a set of rules on language that others don't share, but that's not how meaning works. 'A set of rules' is called grammar. It may have arisen organically and out of 'shared consensus' but today languages only make sense when we maintain that grammar. Imagine if the positions of the words in the above sentence were randomly jumbled up. It'd make no se…

> Imagine if the positions of the words in the above sentence were randomly jumbled up.

But "could care less" isn't random. It is an idiom that has the same meaning as "couldn't care less". If you fed it into a LLM it would know what you mean because meaning is created from global context. Meaning is not some kind of programming language where you input the rules of grammar and the definition of each constituent word, and then out pops the meaning of the sentence. It is impossible to derive meaning that way because meaning is constructed by shared consensus about what collections of words mean in different contexts according to common usage.

Re: WhatsApp forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

#120

Post by vineyardmike »

jevoten wrote: post #77
vineyardmike wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they get paid? Almost every bank in every us-allied countries would have to comply to hand over the money. The US banking regulations apply overseas because those banks want to interact with US entities. That's the nature of the US-Dollar economy. Are you a French wine maker that wants to sell to America? You better be using USD with a friendly bank to pay for things like import fees/tariffs (or the America…

But that's because they're doing business with banks that want to remain friendly with the US, not because they're doing business specifically in US dollars. If they got paid in Turkish liras, but through a bank under US influence, those liras would also get seized, wouldn't they? On the other hand, if someone used a local bank in their country to transact with an entity in China, and China demanded their assets in t…

If someone tried transacting with USD cash in a foreign country it’d probably be fine. (Who knows, some countries probably have laws that limit the validity of transactions in foreign denominationed currencies, but that’s beside the point). Banks are among the most regulated institutions in the world. I doubt there are many banks that have USD-denominated depository accounts that also don’t touch the US banking system (because what good would it be), so the pragmatic reality is that USD requires the Us government blessing. Even if, yes, the government can’t do anything about a few sheets of paper in your wallet. Banks can’t really do currency conversion to/from USD without open access to American-influenced finance markets. So any hypothetical situation that’s not real but totally an imaginable edge case could exist- but it’s not very practical.

> If they got paid in Turkish liras, but through a bank under US influence, those liras would also get seized, wouldn't they?

Yea except no one wants Liras. They want USD (and sometimes Euros). So whoever accepts those liras will want USD, and they’ll transfer them to the USD-backed banking system, and back to the original points. Because again, how do you have access to high-volume USD/lira forex markets without using a US-blessed banking system.

The reality is that international finance largely runs on USD, and orbits US banks. One of the main international influence efforts the Us considers is a stable currency. So much so that other nations use USD as a formal currency. The US exerts significant political pressure and political capital to ensure that everyone needs USD in their economy. America literally made international treaties with every oil producing nations requiring oil to be sold in USD just to ensure that every country needed to inject USD into their economy.

> I can understand a bank rolling over for the US government, but it would be interesting to see if and how their legal system would justify it.

They’d justify it by having laws that say they’d reciprocate and recognize US crimes. It’s what the international community does.

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