U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#531

Post by moksly » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

redman25 wrote: post #17

> NSO Group said in a statement on Thursday that it did not have any indication their tools were used but canceled the relevant accounts and would investigate based on the Reuters inquiry. Why would they cancel accounts without knowledge of wrongdoing?

> Why would they cancel accounts without knowledge of wrongdoing?

I’m not saying that they don’t have that knowledge, and I really don’t mean to offend or be rude, but if the US government asks something of you, you tend to comply wether it’s reasonable or not.

I think it’s naive to think of ourselves as living in a just world. Post 9/11 the CIA abducted European citizens with the knowledge of our governments. In more recent years, here in Denmark we had a rather huge scandal when it was revealed that changing governments had allowed American intelligence services direct access to the backbone of our national internet. The list goes on.

Its of course unfortunate, but the world we live in is basically a huge turd of authoritarian bullshit where the users and customers have no actual enforceable rights.

I mean, even on a much smaller and much more harmless scale, just consider how many times you’ve read about someone losing their Google account here on HN.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#532

Post by junon » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

webmaven wrote: post #478

junon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, a number of people are, myself included. OSDev channels have a few people who talk about it. The Fuchsia folks are around, too, and are quite friendly people. They probably have the most hopeful chance of a widespread release, though admittedly I worry about the affiliation with Google getting in the way of pro-consumerism. Just my opinion though.

I wonder if some combination of Fuchsia, Titan, and Tensor would be sufficient to mitigate a baseband processor vulnerability.

Probably not. Processor vulnerabilities have the perpensity to affect most OSes because they're often pretty fundamental flaws in the basic CPU security mechanisms when discovered.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#533

Post by bjourne » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

montblanc wrote: post #182

Tronno wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is ostensibly a Western ally, yet they sell weapons that are used to attack Western nations and their citizens. Can you see why some people might consider that a problem? Your accusations of anti-semitism are unwelcome and without merit.

You are being a demagogue here. It's 8 phones that were hacked, by someone in Uganda - a friendly country to the U.S, with NSO probably not knowing and Israel as a state definitely not knowing. Was any of the 8 Americans harmed physically btw? I don't care if it's unwelcome to you...I call it as I see it and you're not doing a great job convincing me otherwise.

Since you are a two month-old account whose comment majority is about defending NSO, it may not be easy to convince you.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#534

Post by jaclaz » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #528

dang wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

> And I will not stop calling it out when I see it.

None of my business, but it seems to me that you are perfectly free to call out anything, the point, as I see it, is that:

> Is it really.

is not "calling out" or actually "anything else" that adds anything to the discussion, only a (BTW of difficult interpretation) unsubstantiated comment.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#535

Post by montblanc » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 10:15 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #533

montblanc wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being a demagogue here. It's 8 phones that were hacked, by someone in Uganda - a friendly country to the U.S, with NSO probably not knowing and Israel as a state definitely not knowing. Was any of the 8 Americans harmed physically btw? I don't care if it's unwelcome to you...I call it as I see it and you're not doing a great job convincing me otherwise.

Since you are a two month-old account whose comment majority is about defending NSO, it may not be easy to convince you.

I dont really give a crap about NSO.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#536

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #471

Cyph0n wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear by now that they have 100% visibility into the entire exploitation chain for all of their customers. Their "official statements" mean nothing.

Well since they do the exploitation on behalf of customers, yes? NSO is very popular with governments that don't have robust domestic intelligence because all you have to do is type a phone number into a web form and in anywhere from an hour to a week you get a point and click GUI for accessing the contents of the phone.

... Is this real? There's no way to resist this?

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#537

Post by momenti » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 10:45 AM UTC

technobabbler wrote: post #356

spiznnx wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is an ally of the United States.

"Ally" is probably too weak a word for the relationship we have with Israel. Probably no other country has this much influence on our politics. Not even the UK or Canada, who we share close cultural and linguistic bonds with. Israel is like the Taiwan of the Middle East, meaning it's a useful partner to us in terms of maintaining a separation between the West and some perceived enemy (Muslims in this case, the Chines…

The comparison is also flawed in that Korea at least makes cheap and good stuff.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#538

Post by bicepjai » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 11:13 AM UTC

spiderice wrote: post #483

mike_d wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well since they do the exploitation on behalf of customers, yes? NSO is very popular with governments that don't have robust domestic intelligence because all you have to do is type a phone number into a web form and in anywhere from an hour to a week you get a point and click GUI for accessing the contents of the phone.

> all you have to do is type a phone number into a web form and in anywhere from an hour to a week you get a point and click GUI for accessing the contents of the phone. You have a source for this? I genuinely want to know if they make it that simple

You should listen to darknet diaries podcast about NSO group activities

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#539

Post by poisonarena » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 11:13 AM UTC

rapind wrote: post #503

Eelongate wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, America could drop Hellfire R9X sword missiles through the cars of every NSO employee. In practice, would American politicians have the nerve to go to war with NSO, when NSO probably infected all their phones years ago? How much dirt do they have on American politicians?

Really, all you need is a subtle suggestion to the Israeli government that the hundred billions or so dollars they receive from the US every year might be impacted by continued NSO bad publicity.

that number is way off, and the money they "receive", is specifically for use with US defence contracts and deals.. Its like Disneyland giving you Disneydollars.. You can only spend them at Disneyland.. It is a way for the US military-industrial complex to stay afloat.. And it is a drop in the bucket for Israeli Defence spending, and would make little difference if they took it out.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#540

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

webmaven wrote: post #478

junon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, a number of people are, myself included. OSDev channels have a few people who talk about it. The Fuchsia folks are around, too, and are quite friendly people. They probably have the most hopeful chance of a widespread release, though admittedly I worry about the affiliation with Google getting in the way of pro-consumerism. Just my opinion though.

I wonder if some combination of Fuchsia, Titan, and Tensor would be sufficient to mitigate a baseband processor vulnerability.

Apple mitigates baseband processor vulnerabilities by putting it behind what's essentially an IOMMU.