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NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

citizenlab.ca

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Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#571

Post by H8crilA »

black_puppydog wrote: post #564

Wow, so much discussion of Apple and their software, and so little of NSO group and why they're even a thing. I just want to add this: these people operate pretty much in the open. They're not ashamed of it either, or else they wouldn't put it on their CV: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nso-group/people/ That right there tells me that we as "the tech community" are way too okay with this sort of application of the…

Much of this stuff is classified as a weapon, and thus really sold by the Israeli government, not by the company. It's no different from a MANPADS that sometimes is used to destroy a Ka-52 over Ukraine, and sometimes is used to shoot down a civilian airliner - that is to say it's directed by the foreign policy (and foreign policy errors) of the manufacturing country.

There's no reason to expect the world to disarm any time soon, so the best approach is to be aware and democratically influence policy, rooting out bad ideas and bad actors.

Israel is constantly trying to woo Saudi Arabia so that they can be allies during a potential war with Iran. Israel will definitely sacrifice some human rights activists just for the ability to cross the Saudi airspace. But it has not been going well for Israel lately.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#572

Post by Dylan16807 »

saagarjha wrote: post #567
Dylan16807 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mapping pure RGBA across processes is safe, but also a single extra copy is not a big performance impact in the first place for an image decoder. Configuring the IOMMU is one of the easiest parts of doing it in hardware. That's not going to make things "difficult to secure". And allocating the chunk of memory is trivial.

I think disagree with every single point you brought up, having seeing exploits that involve all of them.

If you've seen an exploit caused by a big pre-allocated array of untrusted RGBA data, please explain how.

(If you mean they put evil data through it and then used a separate exploit to run it, that's not a vulnerability, that's just "data transfer exists".)

And you seeing someone screw up an IOMMU doesn't disqualify it from being one of the easiest parts of a hardware decoder.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#573

Post by emsixteen »

regecks wrote: post #568
emsixteen wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And WhatsApp is almost unusable unless you consent to uploading all your contacts to Facebook. What? How-so? I've never allowed it to do that and it works fine for me, across iOS/Mac/Windows.

It works but it shows phone numbers rather than contact names and you can’t assign a name to a number without giving access to your entire contacts … it ticks me off.

Ah right, fair enough.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#574

Post by quonn »

black_puppydog wrote: post #564

Wow, so much discussion of Apple and their software, and so little of NSO group and why they're even a thing. I just want to add this: these people operate pretty much in the open. They're not ashamed of it either, or else they wouldn't put it on their CV: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nso-group/people/ That right there tells me that we as "the tech community" are way too okay with this sort of application of the…

— The tech we're all so convinced will "make the world a better place." —

That was true 15 years ago … I don‘t hear this often anymore.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#575

Post by jbverschoor »

derefr wrote: post #482
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #234

Its super interesting to me how much its emphasized that you shouldn't use Lockdown Mode unless you are a journalist or otherwise in direct palpable danger. They really do try to talk you out of it. Its curious, because there's very little difference in functionality (as experienced by the user) other than disabling a lot of Apple nonsense from running in the background expanding your attack surface. And everybody pa…

Capitalist view: If they didn't emphasize it, some first-time Apple customers might be convinced by concerned friends and family to enable Lockdown Mode by default, and then might complain to Apple / return their device because it "doesn't do the things it was advertised to do" (because those features don't work in Lockdown Mode.) Realpolitik view: repressive regimes probably only allow Apple to release devices with…

Many websites simply don't work with it enabled

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#576

Post by throwaway290 »

H8crilA wrote: post #571
black_puppydog wrote: post #564

Wow, so much discussion of Apple and their software, and so little of NSO group and why they're even a thing. I just want to add this: these people operate pretty much in the open. They're not ashamed of it either, or else they wouldn't put it on their CV: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nso-group/people/ That right there tells me that we as "the tech community" are way too okay with this sort of application of the…

Much of this stuff is classified as a weapon, and thus really sold by the Israeli government, not by the company. It's no different from a MANPADS that sometimes is used to destroy a Ka-52 over Ukraine, and sometimes is used to shoot down a civilian airliner - that is to say it's directed by the foreign policy (and foreign policy errors) of the manufacturing country. There's no reason to expect the world to disarm an…

AFAIK Israeli government audits NSO and stuff, but they are separate... And Intellexa (authors of Predator I think?) doesn't even get audited because it's "not israeli" on paper

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#577

Post by caisah »

black_puppydog wrote: post #564

Wow, so much discussion of Apple and their software, and so little of NSO group and why they're even a thing. I just want to add this: these people operate pretty much in the open. They're not ashamed of it either, or else they wouldn't put it on their CV: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nso-group/people/ That right there tells me that we as "the tech community" are way too okay with this sort of application of the…

There is a nice PBS documentary about Pegasus's NSO https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/global-spywar....

It looks like NSO is backed up by the Israeli government. They say their software is only sold to governments which were previously vetted, but the reality is that most of the time they sell to authoritarian states which monitor and persecute people opposing the regime.

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#578

Post by H8crilA »

throwaway290 wrote: post #576
H8crilA wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of this stuff is classified as a weapon, and thus really sold by the Israeli government, not by the company. It's no different from a MANPADS that sometimes is used to destroy a Ka-52 over Ukraine, and sometimes is used to shoot down a civilian airliner - that is to say it's directed by the foreign policy (and foreign policy errors) of the manufacturing country. There's no reason to expect the world to disarm an…

AFAIK Israeli government audits NSO and stuff, but they are separate... And Intellexa (authors of Predator I think?) doesn't even get audited because it's "not israeli" on paper

The important part is export control - i.e. deciding who can buy the stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#579

Post by throwaway290 »

regecks wrote: post #568
emsixteen wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And WhatsApp is almost unusable unless you consent to uploading all your contacts to Facebook. What? How-so? I've never allowed it to do that and it works fine for me, across iOS/Mac/Windows.

It works but it shows phone numbers rather than contact names and you can’t assign a name to a number without giving access to your entire contacts … it ticks me off.

You see userpics though. Works for me...

Re: NSO group iPhone zero-click, zero-day exploit captured in the wild

#580

Post by klabb3 »

quonn wrote: post #574
black_puppydog wrote: post #564

Wow, so much discussion of Apple and their software, and so little of NSO group and why they're even a thing. I just want to add this: these people operate pretty much in the open. They're not ashamed of it either, or else they wouldn't put it on their CV: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nso-group/people/ That right there tells me that we as "the tech community" are way too okay with this sort of application of the…

— The tech we're all so convinced will "make the world a better place." — That was true 15 years ago … I don‘t hear this often anymore.

It sad true that tech would make the world a better place (in some ways). But not because of the infinite goodness and wisdom of the first movers, who happened to entrench themselves at the right moment in time.

The same is true today. Eg LLMs have huge potential. What worries me are the sociopaths who draw the same conclusion.

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