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EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

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Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#111

Post by saagarjha »

serf wrote: post #107
saagarjha wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they're not. You're the top comment on this post, despite contributing very little to this discussion. Israel and the geopolitics around mercenary spyware coming out of that country is a very regular occurrence on this site. Despite a few instances of people trying to downplay the connection or redirect the conversation, there is ample discussion of this topic. I know this because I follow this topic closely and r…

might I suggest that 'allowed discussion' isn't at all a metric by which to judge whether or not there are efforts to delegitimize a topic. might I also suggest that sufficiently skilled efforts to direct a conversation will not be detected by most conversation participants.

In that case I would suggest that 't0lo provide us with receipts considering that most of us are not skilled enough to detect these efforts

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#114

Post by alephnerd »

pona-a wrote: post #74
snird wrote: post #51

[flagged]

Inaction is an action. Facilitating the development and sale of malware while benefiting from it through tax revenue and hard power with full awareness is, to me, enablement. The action taken against such vendors proved nominal, as they still continue to operate with no shortage of news stories like this one. It would be naive to think the government itself would not use such a powerful source of intel. Regardless of…

it's much more prosaic than that - it's just A LOT of money.

Israel isn't a signatory of the Wassenar Arrangement, which helped Israeli startups rapidly corner the 0-Day and Exploit Market.

Before the 2010s, the Israeli software scene was largely targeting commodity use cases by trying to undercut existing vendors like Cisco or Arista in price.

Israeli companies saw a market opening that could differentiate them and decided to take it.

It's a segment that would have existed in the US, France, or CEE but regulations prevented it from emerging.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#115

Post by bawolff »

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #77

[flagged]

Well, do you have anything interesting to say about the political implications?

Because i'm not sure what they are.

If we knew who was responsible, we could talk about motive and implications of that, but we don't.

I guess we could consider the broader picture of if this represents an increase on spying on civil society leaders (a bad thing, certainly), but without a base rate to compare with, it seems like conjecture on this is pointless. Does this represent something new, or is it just a continuation of the age old practise of keeping an eye on your enemies? I have no idea. I suppose there is something to be said that hacking a modern cell phone is much more invasive than watergate-style survelience, but that is not exactly a new observation.

So what are the political implications we should be talking about?

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#116

Post by flanked-evergl »

octopoc wrote: post #110
biasedjournal wrote: post #91

the spyware and other cyberattacks get published very selectively everybody is constantly a target of attacks but what makes it to the news is the journalist choice

But, who sent the attack is the news. Sure we’re always bombarded with attacks by random cyber gangs, but when you’re targeted by an organization with official credentials that tends to raise some eyebrows.

The post does not claim the EU parliament member was targeted by an organization with official credentials.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#117

Post by mdhb »

whearyou wrote: post #53
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This piece might be relevant: https://www.leefang.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-information

It’s a minor effort compared to the hundreds of millions Iran, China, and Russia have spent for a decade on influence operations. Those get little air time in hard progressive or far right spaces since these anti liberal influence operations mostly promote hard progressive and far right perspectives.

Can you give some examples or “hard progressive” influence ops that have come out of China, Russia or Iran?

That’s really in direct opposition to their stated aims and it just seems like a false equivalence.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#118

Post by alephnerd »

I think people commenting on here are commenting on the "Israeli" part and are ignoring the bigger issue - which country is it that attacked the MEP.

Israel is very laissez-faire about regulating the tech industry because it employs almost 10% of the country. As such, offensive security companies sell to anyone who isn't on the US Sanctions list.

The question is which buyer did the attack.

Hidden between the lines of the reporting is that it might be Hungarian intelligence [0]

Imo, the bigger question is why Hungary, Poland, Spain, Greece, and Cyprus (all countries part of the recent EU Spyware Scandal) [1] continue to allow their Interior Ministries to attack the phones of both domestic and foreign opponents, and are abusing "Spyware for political gain" [2].

[0] - https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/orban-c...

[1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/parliament-defense-subcommit...

[2] - https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-spyware-probe-slams-gover...

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#119

Post by OhioMan2943 »

bawolff wrote: post #115
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #77

[flagged]

Well, do you have anything interesting to say about the political implications? Because i'm not sure what they are. If we knew who was responsible, we could talk about motive and implications of that, but we don't. I guess we could consider the broader picture of if this represents an increase on spying on civil society leaders (a bad thing, certainly), but without a base rate to compare with, it seems like conjectur…

1. That the legislative stranglehold on the eu and other bodies by this country is so strong that they do next to nothing to criticise/sanction israel despite literally being hacked by them? Post-pegasus as well.

2. This states lack of care and oftentimes facilitation of these groups, and their close ties to its military

3. The sense of neo mccarthyism that this creates with the idea of constant surveilance through these types of vulnerabilities.

I'm full of ideas tonight

Same problem, but different lens and conception, and the circumstances and differences are >verySeriously, let's start talking about those points in this thread

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#120

Post by brabel »

Brechreiz wrote: post #62
whearyou wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a minor effort compared to the hundreds of millions Iran, China, and Russia have spent for a decade on influence operations. Those get little air time in hard progressive or far right spaces since these anti liberal influence operations mostly promote hard progressive and far right perspectives.

anti liberal influence operations do not promote hard progressive perspectives.

Wild guess: they could because the best way to make people more conservative is to make liberals look more and more extreme. These things go in cycles, when the pendulum shifts too far to the left or to the right, it tends to swiftly move back the other way, and so the cycle continues.

Example: the far right tries to depict the left as degenerates who want to make all children gay just because they support introducing LGBT+ friendly material to the school education. I'm sure some people buy that and hence become more inclined to reject the left, as who wants to "force" children to become homosexual, or transgender, right?!

Now, whether China/Russia are doing it or not, I have no idea, and I suspect no one here does. But even if they do, I have trouble seeing how they would be more capable than Europe and the US, who clearly also try pretty hard to promote their own values elsewhere, so they can hardly complain about others doing it.

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