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US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

reuters.com

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Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#291

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

lapcat wrote: post #274
saagarjha wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, now we’re getting somewhere. This is far more interesting than just going “we need quality”. > It's curious that the first sentence mentions social and political issues, whereas the second sentence completely ignores them. I didn’t talk about them here because I wasn’t really interested in getting into an argument about it. I think you know me well enough to agree that I am well aware of the social and political…

> the social and political implications of these kinds of attacks > Hacker News in general is not a great place to talk about a country’s policy on offensive cyberattacks That's not what I was referring to. By "the social and political issues in tech", I meant the general issues involved in building software, the internal and external cultures of the software developers. > But being able to iterate and release softwa…

> I don't understand why Apple has chosen to tie Safari updates to OS updates

The main reason is because of WebKit, which is a built-in OS SDK.

If they update WebKit, then Safari also needs to be updated, to satisfy the new links, if for no other reason.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#292

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

saagarjha wrote: post #272
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point taken. But I feel that the root cause is attitude and encouragement. Sort of “the wolf you feed” kind of thing. That’s not really something that can be addressed by technology or even education. That’s the kind of thing that we handle with social infrastructure. Peer pressure, cultural norms, “tribal knowledge,” etc. In my mind, the best way to approach that, is by contributing small, almost “throwaway” human-i…

One of the specific things I’d also like to emphasize, being in this industry, is that people often misjudge how to make their software secure. Yes, it involves caring and some level of quality of course, but you can write a perfect, well-designed, award winning app that people love with all the care that goes into that. That won’t stop NSO Group from completely and utterly hacking it. So to some extent yes it is a p…

Sounds like what is needed, is humility, and maybe folks that know how to do it, making the information more accessible.

That’s not always something folks want to do. Information is valuable.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#293

Post by skyyler »

bbqfog wrote: post #276
Jiro wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes I am boycotting Israel (and Zionism), for genocide, apartheid, human rights violations, interfering with my own government. They've been breaking international law since the Balfour Declaration.

Thank you for having morals.

I find it's really interesting how many comments opinions like this get on reddit and HN. It almost feels like there are orgs similar to marketing firms that get paid to promote zionism on the internet...

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#294

Post by bbqfog »

skyyler wrote: post #293
bbqfog wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am boycotting Israel (and Zionism), for genocide, apartheid, human rights violations, interfering with my own government. They've been breaking international law since the Balfour Declaration.

Thank you for having morals. I find it's really interesting how many comments opinions like this get on reddit and HN. It almost feels like there are orgs similar to marketing firms that get paid to promote zionism on the internet...

Yes, you also get censored like crazy for speaking the truth. I don’t even think my upvotes work on this site anymore. I just upvoted your comment if it doesn’t show it.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#295

Post by MomsAVoxell »

woodruffw wrote: post #234
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sudan, Ethiopia/Tigray, and Syria Yes, but these are not western allies with immense financial and industrial resources, shared among themselves, whose leadership have signaled for decades their intent to create a new world order in the ashes of the wars they have intentionally fought - for decades. Certainly the genocides in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Syria are atrocities which must be addressed. But they are not the wo…

I don’t think Western versus non-Western provides absolution. You asked for examples of military conflicts with similar degrees of civilian harm, and I’ve given you three examples that demonstrate that you don’t need to be the world’s primary superpower (or its close ally) to cause damage on its scale. Consider your own case: China has done plenty to immiserate minorities within its own borders, has made it clear tha…

This century, China has lifted a billion people out of poverty into what we would consider ‘middle class’ conditions .. while the west has waged war and created conditions, for example, where 36 million refugees from our wars clog the worlds borders.

The order of magnitude of ‘help versus hurt’ is, rather astonishing. And, frankly, sad.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#296

Post by woodruffw »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #295
woodruffw wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Western versus non-Western provides absolution. You asked for examples of military conflicts with similar degrees of civilian harm, and I’ve given you three examples that demonstrate that you don’t need to be the world’s primary superpower (or its close ally) to cause damage on its scale. Consider your own case: China has done plenty to immiserate minorities within its own borders, has made it clear tha…

This century, China has lifted a billion people out of poverty into what we would consider ‘middle class’ conditions .. while the west has waged war and created conditions, for example, where 36 million refugees from our wars clog the worlds borders. The order of magnitude of ‘help versus hurt’ is, rather astonishing. And, frankly, sad.

I don't think you get a free pass for doing bad things if you also do good things. The US imposed domestic shortages for a decade following WWII to keep Europe fed while also rebuilding it; this doesn't somehow offset everything else we've done over the last 80 years.

China has done remarkable things for its citizens, much like the Soviet Union did. It did those things while doing terrible things, both to its own citizens and to those within its sphere of influence (looking, for example, at China's willingness to ignore atrocities in North Korea). This is a universal theme with country-level activity: there is no uniquely good country, only shades of (dis)reputability across history.

To tie it back to the original question: with enough perspective into global affairs, it's almost impossible to discern the West and non-West in terms of brutality towards civilians during conflicts. Differences in wealth and power are real, but are not immediately relevant to civilians being harmed with the same basic weapons (rifles) and techniques (privation, exposure, insecurity) that are present and readily accessible to every country on Earth.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#297

Post by singleshot_ »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #176
WatchDog wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these firms target US citizens without a US warrant?

You don’t need a warrant to target US citizens unless you are the government.

Well, this is not really true, given what we know about the government actor doctrine.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#298

Post by aguaviva »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #289
aguaviva wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friday, October 20, 2017: WASHINGTON - Stanislav Nazarov, 46, a dual citizen of Israel and Russia, has been extradited from Israel to face charges in an indictment accusing him of taking part in an international money laundering scheme. Israel is quite financially independent these days, and has been so for decades. The US does not simply "bankroll the entire country" by any stretch. But hey, it's a free planet, and…

https://m.jpost.com/opinion/article-712631 https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=... https://www.timesofisrael.com/diaspora-pedophiles-increasing... You're very aware what I'm saying is true on a general scale. Sure, exceptions exist. You also know that the aid the US gives is significant and if it hadn't been given every year for decades, Israel would be nothing like what it is right now, it ma…

[dead]

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#299

Post by hulitu »

upofadown wrote: post #142
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #14

I thought Whatsapp and signal share the same encryption

It was a buffer overflow in a VOIP stack: * https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18622744/whatsapp-spyware... Interestingly enough, Signal (and others) had the same sort of vulnerability on Android from a WebRTC stack: * https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/08/exploiting-an... The big issue in both cases is that the exploit was triggered before the user answered the call. I think the moral here is that a secure…

> I think the moral here is that a secure messenger should not execute inherently insecure code (i.e.complex code) on behalf of entities that are not really well trusted by the user. The default should be always plain text.

Whattsup and co, are very happy to execute untrusted code: images displayed in messages, websites fetched and rendered. Basically a bad actor's wet dream.

Re: US judge finds NSO Group liable for hacking journalists via WhatsApp

#300

Post by hulitu »

xvector wrote: post #167
upofadown wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a buffer overflow in a VOIP stack: * https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18622744/whatsapp-spyware... Interestingly enough, Signal (and others) had the same sort of vulnerability on Android from a WebRTC stack: * https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/08/exploiting-an... The big issue in both cases is that the exploit was triggered before the user answered the call. I think the moral here is that a secure…

The other moral here is to stop using memory unsafe languages. It's just so incredibly dumb that we keep making excuses for this.

> The other moral here is to stop using memory unsafe languages. It's just so incredibly dumb that we keep making excuses for this

Has your "memory safe" language been audited for security ?

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