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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

#171

Post by dang »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #144
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right this is HN not 4chan, because none of the things you said have actually happened here and people can easily have good respectful debate. It feels like you're attempting to use this as a way to silence debate around the country of origin rather than anything else

It did happen: https://archive.ph/KT4q8 and to be quite frank, that is just the most egregious example and this thread is anything but respectful debate with statements like "I've taken to using it because i feel uncomfortable even naming them a lot of the time" and implying that HN is somehow afflicted by institutional corruption.

I think you misread that post. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41071644.

Btw, you don't need screenshots of HN comments. Anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile can read the original: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066729.

All: if you turn 'showdead' on, please don't forget that you did so, because we sometimes get emails from people asking "how can you possibly condone $horrible-comment appearing on HN?" when in reality the account has been banned for years.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#172

Post by dang »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #146
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you know that isn't the case on HN because we still have a good standard of conversation and respect

There is litterally a response to you that claims that Jews make bread out of babies: https://archive.ph/KT4q8

That comment was sarcastically saying the opposite of what you took it to mean—at least I believe so, based on the account's history.

Of course, it was still a bad HN comment and rightly flagged by users—but if it's evidence of anything, it's evidence that other HN commenters agree with you.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41071782 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41071644 also. I've replied in each place you posted this because people often jump to wrong conclusions about the community and it's important not to do that.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#173

Post by dang »

admissionsguy wrote: post #76
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #13

I notice issues relating to these groups (israeli cyber groups) are very quick to be denied or delegitimised on HN

It’s the octopus, clearly (and they make bread out of babies, as my grandmother used to say)

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and we have to ban accounts that keep doing it.

In this case you triggered another commenter into a complete misunderstanding (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066935), taking your comment to be not only serious but also representative of the community. Given the high level of inflammation around this topic (everywhere, including on HN), that is seriously not cool.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules in the future, we'd appreciate it. It looks like you've been breaking them for quite a long time, not just with drive-by flamebait like the above and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066717, but also with ideological battle comments generally. If you want to keep posting here, we need you (as with any other user) to drop that.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#175

Post by impossiblefork »

darkhorn wrote: post #156

The country that is selling that software should be sanctined. People involving in the development of that software should be charged as spyes.

Legally, this is very feasible. Here in Sweden we have two laws which are applicable: the law against unauthorized surveillance and the law against unauthorized computer access and the law forbidding aiding anybody in such crimes.

It's only two year's imprisonment, but there's presumably a lot of participants in the exploit development etc.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#177

Post by Yoric »

anigbrowl wrote: post #20
Yoric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I wonder which other nations are known for the development and commercialization of such tools. North Korea and Russia spring to mind.

Well, the US is pretty well-known for its spying capabilities, both government (NSA/Echelon) and private (Palantir, etc.)

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#178

Post by paulmd »

bawolff wrote: post #101
echoangle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it wasn’t phishing. If the claims are correct, just opening the link would have compromised the phone. If that’s true, I find it try extraordinary. Phishing is just having a fake webpage asking for credentials, right? Infecting a phone with spyware just by visiting a webpage is much harder and much worse.

Spear phishing is usually inclusive of attacks from an email that involve tricking the user into doing something unsafe. E.g. see definition https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/spea... > If the claims are correct, just opening the link would have compromised the phone I'm not sure if that is being claimed. The twitter post just said the link would have "exposed" them to spyware. One possible inter…

this is exactly the kind of scenario where you’d expect to find a high-value zero-day deployed (state-level actor against a known, high-value target) so I see no reason to disregard the actual claim in favor of a lesser one.

yes, this class of exploits definitely exists (a while ago there was one that worked just receiving a text message!) and is the primary reason why apple offers the lockdown mode for these sorts of people who actually might be the target of these advanced threats. Lockdown mode severely reduces the amount of “auto” shit that happens in the background, which ruins the experience but is also more secure against this style of attack.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#179

Post by mcantelon »

alephnerd wrote: post #118

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…

>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].

It's also a national security issue given that Israel may be piggybacking on the spying.

Re: EU parliament member hit by Israeli Candiru spyware

#180

Post by swaginator »

This is pretty common, Israel has previously spied on the ICC and intimidated a prosecutor:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-28/ty-article/.p...

Not to mention the wiretapping of phones of members of the Palestinian authority, probably lots more that we just are not aware of.

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