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NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

reuters.com

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Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#171

Post by lewiscollard »

The bad guys will find out first.

Back when I first heard that, the bad guys were bored and/or hyperactive teenagers who understood how computers work. Today we are talking nation-state actors and nation-state-sponsored actors with practically unlimited resources.

Keeping your code secret will not stop them, cf. WhatsApp. "Responsible disclosure" will not stop them either, and sets up all the wrong kinds of incentives for vendors to sit on problems until just before the "responsible" disclosure window closes. And FFS, there are still grown adults that believe building backdoors into E2E won't be exploited by the bad guys first, insofar as they are not the bad guys themselves.

I only have questions, not answers, and I don't know what we do from here.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#172

Post by J_cst »

dependenttypes wrote: post #130
jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

I presume that most people will disagree with this but I believe that it is related to Jewish people on average being generally smarter than a non-jewish person. Consider for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates > "Nobel Prizes[note 1] have been awarded to over 900 individuals,[1] of whom at least 20% were Jews, although the Jewish population comprises less than 0.2% of the world's po…

Also in my experience (mainly business) I experimented that Jewish people are much smarter than the average non Jewish business people I've been dealing with. At best I could get a draw, never a business win. (I don't mean anything bad or implying anything more than what I've written. Please read my comment in a positive way).

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#173

Post by fouric »

blotter_paper wrote: post #16

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

Hypocritical? How many of your personal secrets (or even your corporate secrets) would cause >= thousands of people to die or >= billions of taxpayer dollars to be lost if they were leaked?

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#174

Post by ineedasername »

blotter_paper wrote: post #16

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

I guess they just don't like the inconvenience of having to find the backdoors on their own. It's hard work! But hard work has never killed anyone*

*With the exception of people forced to work to death, or under unsafe conditions, or that were doing a perfectly reasonable amount of hard work that none the less triggered a heart attack. Or...

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#175

Post by LegitShady »

dependenttypes wrote: post #143
colordrops wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a dangerous path - saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber. That sort of dialogue is completely taboo at least in the US.

Taboos are a way to hinder progress and science. I will not fall into that trap. I could be wrong ofc, but I was under the impression that it is widely accepted in the scientific community that intelligence is at least partially affected by genes. > saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber Note: I said on average.

The issue is not the average, but the extremes. When you have two identical distribution curves but one's center is shifted, the effect on the ends of the distributions are exaggerated.

A standard deviation increase in the average leads to a huge difference in demographics at the extremes. The population with lower mean will have the majority of the lower tail of the distribution, and the the other population will dominate the upper tail. In the highest 1% they will appear enormously over-represented.

In the middle is where it matters least, because near average people for both populations might have very similar iqs.

For a paper on the issue of specifically ashkenazi (rather than 'jewish') IQ I recommend this one from the University of Utah:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi...

Note the increased IQ is specifically for askenazi jews, as opposed to say sephardic jews. The paper identifies historical social issues that would make selection for intelligence a strong factor in ashkenazi history, explores possible genetic causes identified through unique mutations not present in adjacent populations, and goes into depth on IQ and IQ heritability.

A high level summary available from the economist behind a paywall but viewable here:

https://outline.com/XnhPWd

I hope you find it interesting. I think its scientific enough that few people should find it controversial, except those who believe that IQ is not a useful measurement of intelligence, which I don't think is an opinion you share given your previous posts.

The controversial part would be Jordan B Peterson talking about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQHH6o9ual8

No matter your feelings on him, worth a watch.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#176

Post by ineedasername »

hanniabu wrote: post #155
blotter_paper wrote: post #16

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

How else do you expect them to conduct illegal activities?

The same way most large governments & corporations do it: Without any accountability or consequences.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#177

Post by nocturnial »

guelo wrote: post #163
jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

If an American tech company tried to do something like this some employees would refuse and you would hear about the employee protests. I think because of the compulsory military service and their multi-generational dirty war Israel engineers don't seem to have these kinds of moral qualms. (Normally I get flagged on HN for saying things like this, would love an explanation if it happens this time.)

I'm not going to flag you but I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions.

I don't have the numbers but I would be very surprised if the majority of Israeli cyber-ops ex-military sells spyware to authoritarian regimes. A few did do that but I don't think it's justified to blame the military service and whatnot for this.

Another thing to remember is that an Italian company also sold spyware to authoritarian regimes. The things they did was really similar to the Israeli one. Same excuses, same pr, same blabla... but without the compulsory military service and whatever reasons you listed.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#178

Post by [deleted] »

fouric wrote: post #173
blotter_paper wrote: post #16

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

Hypocritical? How many of your personal secrets (or even your corporate secrets) would cause >= thousands of people to die or >= billions of taxpayer dollars to be lost if they were leaked?

[deleted]

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#179

Post by huehehue »

fouric wrote: post #173
blotter_paper wrote: post #16

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

Hypocritical? How many of your personal secrets (or even your corporate secrets) would cause >= thousands of people to die or >= billions of taxpayer dollars to be lost if they were leaked?

I don't think people with more impactful secrets deserve more privacy than anybody else.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#180

Post by nullandvoid »

lewiscollard wrote: post #171

The bad guys will find out first. Back when I first heard that, the bad guys were bored and/or hyperactive teenagers who understood how computers work. Today we are talking nation-state actors and nation-state-sponsored actors with practically unlimited resources. Keeping your code secret will not stop them, cf. WhatsApp. "Responsible disclosure" will not stop them either, and sets up all the wrong kinds of incentive…

We have to make this knowledge of closed source systems not being safe more wide spread more approachable to the lamen.

It will take time but generations are slowly waking up to the bullshit. We need to be able to run open source code on servers in a transparent and reportable way that everyone can understand

I see services like whatsapp taking the stance it is essential. Its the only place I (barely) feel like I can speak my mind when chatting with non tech savvy friends (of which it would be a hard sell to get to install anything else more rock solid). I really hope we can adopt widespread e2e encrypted chat platforms moving forward and dont regress in this front else it will be a sad future

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