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Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

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Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#381

Post by NoOn3 »

bartekpacia wrote: post #130
anticodon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian soldiers participating in SMO reported multiple times that after they exchange texts and photos with their relatives in WhatsApp, that information ends up in Ukrainian military HQs next day. With photos. And later used, for example, to harass the relatives of the soldier. Could be some other mechanism (e.g. Google Drive or some other kind of malware), hard to be sure in the world, where since 2011 Snowden's r…

> Russian soldiers participating in SMO Russian soldiers participating in the invasion of Ukraine. FTFY.

[flagged]

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#382

Post by 4gotunameagain »

bawolff wrote: post #323

I kind of suspect this is more a desperate regime on the brink of (at least military) collapse grasping at straws. Potentially they might be worried about anti-regime activists organizing on whatsapp and want to push people to more easily monitoriable alternatives. If iran knew meta was doing this for a long time, then it raises the question of why they are just asking people to delete it now. One would presume that…

Or, it is a country at war that was initiated unjustly by a third party that has the support of the US, and they're doing all they can to survive.

Why trust a US company when the US helped Israel attack Iran while in negotiations ?

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#383

Post by megous »

lxgr wrote: post #245
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing private keys gets around all that.

That would require explicit code to do so, which would probably be extremely hard to explain away.

Yeah. Go review eg. okta verify apk and tell me it doesn't do anything nefarious. It's an app that basically just does a TOTP hash from some short secret for all I care/use it for. I can probably implement what it does for me in about 200-300 lines of C code without any dependencies.

The shit app has 60 MiB compressed. I was not even able to find where in the code it works with the damn secrets it uses for TOTP.

Now do WhatsApp with its zillion features.

If you mean that it's hard to explain away for the devs themselves, then people do much worse things in this world, and are able explain it to themselves just fine as something good, even.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#384

Post by pcthrowaway »

toast0 wrote: post #364
pcthrowaway wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about nukes is that they're completely useless at defending against an internal revolution

Not completely. You're more likely to get external help to prop up your regime iff you have nukes and the external forces think it's better for your regime to stay in power than have a revolutionary force control the nukes. (Of course, if the external forces would rather the revolutionary force, then it's not so helpful)

For every country that has nukes, some countries will want them in power and some will want them deposed. You can assume both forces will be operating at all times (which to be fair is also true of pre-nuclear countries)

Hostile foreign countries are however much more likely to pour resources into fomenting a revolution if you have nukes as this would avoid conventional warfare which has the potential to escalate to the point of nuclear deployment.

In the context of Iran vs. North Korea which this discussion is in reference to, Iran is very likely to fall from internal forces which overwhelmingly disapprove of the government, compared to North Korea which seemingly has overwhelming support from its people, and has been cut off from the rest of the world since before the Internet was available.

It's unlikely another country will ever be capable of instituting the same degree of isolationism that North Korea has, owing to the prevalance of internet-capable devices everywhere else in the world. And honestly I don't think the North Korean government would have survived as long as it had without this policy.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#385

Post by [deleted] »

scrubs wrote: post #379
consumer451 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. This is why the best lawyers in the world work for these people. Over drinks, when I brought up some of the blatant dark patterns in the ad market, someone who worked at one of the biggest companies in the world responded to me bluntly: "yeah, sure, but have we ever lost a case in court over click fraud? No, we have not."

Correct. The best liers like the best bullies are really good at assessing risk. They're honest in close when they sense they're butt is not on the line.

[deleted]

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#386

Post by megous »

pier25 wrote: post #116

Israel doesn't even need Whatsapp to be installed. The IDF's Unit 8200[1] can probably hack most phones in Iran. And if not any of the private companies selling spyware software like the NSO Group[2 and 3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group [3] https://mepc.org/commentaries/israeli-cyber-companies-overvi...

have-a-break:

How do you send an "invisible" SMS to other country's cellular network undetected? Especially on a mass scale...

I know about OMA DM, and FOTA update/access, and binaries certain US operators pre-install into phones/modems for remote access, etc. since I was reverse engineering this stuff. I just don't see how this would be invisible from the targetted country's cellular network operator.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#387

Post by andrewflnr »

seydor wrote: post #375
andrewflnr wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Democrats/liberals also don't want a war, especially one that vaguely supports Israel. Very few people in America are anything less than strongly opposed, just a few Iran hawks.

We re about to find out in the following days

Find out what? I mean, I'm not sure whether Americans support war has much bearing on whether it happens.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#389

Post by TiredOfLife »

Cyph0n wrote: post #182
lurk2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like Microsoft did with PRISM or AT&T did with 641A, most likely no one would find out People did find out.

Only because a select few people had the balls to blow the whistle. Imagine if Snowden decided to just do his work and move on? How much longer would it have taken for these facts to be revealed to the public?

He literally did his work. He worked two jobs.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#390

Post by [deleted] »

scrubs wrote: post #379
consumer451 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. This is why the best lawyers in the world work for these people. Over drinks, when I brought up some of the blatant dark patterns in the ad market, someone who worked at one of the biggest companies in the world responded to me bluntly: "yeah, sure, but have we ever lost a case in court over click fraud? No, we have not."

Correct. The best liers like the best bullies are really good at assessing risk. They're honest in close when they sense they're butt is not on the line.

[deleted]
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