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The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

arstechnica.com

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Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#81

Post by hulahoof »

yardie wrote: post #11
hermes8329 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that sarcasm? The Israelis spying on the us is hardly anything new

A bit of both. I assume they can spy on the US through 5-eyes, 9-eyes, 27eyes, etc. But to allow Uganda to do it was a bridge too far. If NSO had been in almost any other country there wouldn't be a building left standing. The US regards cyberattacks as an act of war.

But Israel isn't a part of any of those agreements, it would be just as likely they spy on the US via a direct partnership with US agencies

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#82

Post by trhway »

yardie wrote: post #5
pm90 wrote: post #3

This is an interesting industry. > “We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” he told the friend, complaining that some clients had asked to shift their contracts to lesser-known rivals, according to a person familiar with the conversation. I guess if you have this perspective, you want to maximize revenues and IPO before your product gets misused and invites US sanctions. I wonder what the reaction would be…

> I wonder what the reaction would be if this was a US company and not an Israeli one. For hacking into a US official's phone without a warrant? They would go to jail.

This is why that mutual practice that say British spy on US companies/people, and US in exchange spies on British companies/people, and both thus don't violate their own laws.

My understanding is that various US private, political and government forces have been using Israeli private physical and cyber security/intelligence services like NSO against US targets in particular for that reason. For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube#Iran_Nuclear_Deal_a...

"In 2017 aides to U.S. President Donald Trump had contracted with Black Cube in order to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal by discrediting two of former Obama administration officials such as Colin Kahl and Ben Rhodes."

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#83

Post by lostcolony »

sophacles wrote: post #76
adventured wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as it was by a state without a mature domestic intelligence capability going to market to buy tools of one, to spy on actual spies in its borders How do you intend to support your claim that the 11 US diplomats and employees from the US embassy are spies (and thus are supposedly legitimate targets in your view)? Nowhere does it say US spies were the targets. And no other story on this subject has presented evidence…

US intelligence organizations openly state that a common way for them to operate in a country is to give their agents cover "jobs" at the state department. When state department employees or "employees" work at an embassy they are diplomats. Apparently this is common in the intelligence world. Whether these particular people were spies, it seems like proper counter-intelligence to track all diplomats pretty closely b…

Tracking movement vs intercepting communication is a very different thing. In general, any attempt to spy on an ally is going to get a lot of egg on your face if it comes out, and if it's using tools your ally helped finance and/etc, you can bet it's going to get complicated.

In this instance, Israel needs the US, Pegasus was Israel's technical gorilla in the spy world, and it got used on the US by someone they sold it to. This level of fallout given that is not unexpected; Israel cares more about maintaining ties with the US than they do about a given tool, company, or to enable Ugandan spying operations.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#85

Post by tclancy »

seoaeu wrote: post #51
jprd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see a world in which use of NSO tech is legitimate. Get a court order to tap the phone line, etc. How can usage of a Mossad / IDF tool be considered legitimate? Just because the ruling party in a state decides so, doesn't mean this has any bearing on human rights or _legitimacy_. China is eradicating Uyghur culture and running for-profit concentration camps. These are legitimate uses of their Governmental po…

Countries conducting espionage is a well established and has been done for centuries. At the same time, the CIA doesn't get court orders when they want to listen in on FSB agents, nor vice versa. I don't see why Uganda should be held to different standards or why partnering with an Israeli company instead of developing the tools themselves should matter here.

Ok, but why carry water for that or them?

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#86

Post by jessaustin »

pm90 wrote: post #3

This is an interesting industry. > “We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” he told the friend, complaining that some clients had asked to shift their contracts to lesser-known rivals, according to a person familiar with the conversation. I guess if you have this perspective, you want to maximize revenues and IPO before your product gets misused and invites US sanctions. I wonder what the reaction would be…

...maximize revenues and IPO...

According to TFA their real trouble comes from the massive loans they took in order to take the firm private. If CEO really said the above, he seems really squirrelly.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#87

Post by not2b »

pc86 wrote: post #66
not2b wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear powers can't make full-scale war on each other. If they ever do, the death toll would make WW2 look like a skirmish. So any attacks are at the edges (respond in kind, or proportionately, rather than escalate to a shooting war).

So the US regards cyberattacks as acts of war if it comes from a non-nuclear country, and tomfoolery from a nuclear one? I don't disagree with your point, simply saying that IMO the US doesn't take cyberattacks seriously precisely because it leads down a dark path with China (and probably Russia too if we're being honest).

It doesn't mean they don't take them seriously, it means that responding with missiles isn't an option if the other guy has the ability to massively retaliate. Other options, like sanctions or retaliating in kind, plus shoring up defenses, are a better bet. Even retaliating in kind is problematic if the result is that the Internet becomes almost unusable.

All during the Cold War the USA and USSR engaged in various kinds of low-level sabotage against each other. Fortunately for us all, it didn't escalate out of control.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#88

Post by Sporktacular »

seoaeu wrote: post #51
jprd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see a world in which use of NSO tech is legitimate. Get a court order to tap the phone line, etc. How can usage of a Mossad / IDF tool be considered legitimate? Just because the ruling party in a state decides so, doesn't mean this has any bearing on human rights or _legitimacy_. China is eradicating Uyghur culture and running for-profit concentration camps. These are legitimate uses of their Governmental po…

Countries conducting espionage is a well established and has been done for centuries. At the same time, the CIA doesn't get court orders when they want to listen in on FSB agents, nor vice versa. I don't see why Uganda should be held to different standards or why partnering with an Israeli company instead of developing the tools themselves should matter here.

It's not Uganda that's being held to account here. Its NSO, and not just for selling to Uganda.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#89

Post by ashtonkem »

adventured wrote: post #65
motohagiography wrote: post #16

I commented previously that the Uganda case was the first truly legitimate application of NSO's tech and the first one that wasn't actually a scandal, as it was by a state without a mature domestic intelligence capability going to market to buy tools of one, to spy on actual spies in its borders. It seems this particular NSO case is being used as bargaining leverage to discredit Israel's position in the Iran nuclear…

> as it was by a state without a mature domestic intelligence capability going to market to buy tools of one, to spy on actual spies in its borders How do you intend to support your claim that the 11 US diplomats and employees from the US embassy are spies (and thus are supposedly legitimate targets in your view)? Nowhere does it say US spies were the targets. And no other story on this subject has presented evidence…

I wouldn’t hazard a guess about the exact number, but spies being given diplomatic cover (and diplomats spying) has been the norm for centuries. A huge chunk of Cold War spy craft was about diplomatic personnel trying to evade their followers in order to meet with their contacts without exposing them.

Re: The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse

#90

Post by filoeleven »

kshacker wrote: post #80
jprd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see a world in which use of NSO tech is legitimate. Get a court order to tap the phone line, etc. How can usage of a Mossad / IDF tool be considered legitimate? Just because the ruling party in a state decides so, doesn't mean this has any bearing on human rights or _legitimacy_. China is eradicating Uyghur culture and running for-profit concentration camps. These are legitimate uses of their Governmental po…

> I cannot see a world in which use of NSO tech is legitimate. Get a court order to tap the phone line, etc. In general, I am against government overreach, so I agree with a lot of what you said. However, let us say I have a court order to surveil person X - how am I ever going to get all the information when they could be communicating via a phone call, SMS, iMessage, whatsapp, gmail, facebook messenger, signal, tel…

Half of those services will happily share all of that person’s data when handed a warrant. Some don’t even require that much.

On the flipside, a snooper will always have to do a monumental and maybe impossible amount of work to break a one-time pad by chipping away at the security that surrounds it.

What makes security tech fundamentally different? Why should it be easy to break? A warrant lets someone search my belongings; it does not compel me to give law enforcement the information they are seeking.

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