Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 260 posts

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#91

Post by fjtktkgnfnr »

coldcode wrote: post #41

If someone were to use NSO paid hacking to attack Apple executives's devices and then release everything they found, I bet Apple might take this more seriously instead of having some PR flack write marketing copy. Same is true of any tech company: until it hurts them specifically they can just ignore it or make it sound innocuous. Maybe Amazon has been targeted and they found out. If someone were to use it against US…

> If someone were to use NSO paid hacking to attack Apple executives's devices and then release everything they found, I bet Apple might take this more seriously instead of having some PR flack write marketing copy.

That's not why Apple is skittish about this. Any action from them would invite the question "What about China?". And Apple loves China('s money).

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#92

Post by JumpCrisscross »

geofft wrote: post #21
asah wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta draw the line somewhere - this is way over that line.

Isn't the line due process of law, though? If NSO is allegedly committing a crime, then we can punish them in courts of law that are empowered and qualified to investigate the allegations fully and decide whether to deprive them of their rights. Why would we put these decisions in the hands of Big Tech? At least, that's what I heard during the debates about deplatforming Parler. It was apparently very bad for private…

> Isn't the line due process of law, though?

For state actions, yes. For private actors, if I suspect someone is using my services to break the law or engage in terrorism, "but your honor, I didn't have a court order confirming they were terrorists" won't cut my liability.

Parler was a free speech question because it was almost purely speech. NSO Group isn't just speaking. It's doing, and it's doing things that will bring liability for people around it.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#93

Post by Scoundreller »

reaperducer wrote: post #82
sloshnmosh wrote: post #20

I contacted Amazon to report an advertiser out of Tel Aviv that was using JavaScript hosted on CloudFront to fingerprint user's devices and if an Android device was detected a fake media player or fake CAPTCHA would trick user's into accepting push notifications for fake virus warnings to install questionable apps from the Play Store. This script also pushed ads for a fake AdBlock app that was a dropper for banking t…

Amazon refused to do anything about it. Actually "refused" to do anything about it, or didn't respond to you?

I’ve had government agencies claim it’s not a refusal/rejection if they refuse at the moment and claim you might (with no guarantee) have success if you try later.

I call it a “constructive refusal”.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79
h1fra wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So should we consider the NSA a terrorism-aiding organization? edit: the tone is lost via internet; my own opinion on this: yes, it is.

> So should we considered the NSA a terrorism-aiding organization This statement needs the "we" defined to be meaningful. If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state. If "we"` is e.g. China, probably no, because words have meanings and the arms of recognized foreign states don't conduct terrorism, they do espionage and they do war. If "we" is a freshman dorm room, then, of course, the NSA is…

> > So should we considered the NSA a terrorism-aiding organization

> If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state.

Its perhaps worth noting that “terrorism” originally exclusively denoted action by the State against its own subjects, though it was within a few years expanded to include other activities.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#95

Post by whymauri »

blackearl wrote: post #73
h1fra wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So should we consider the NSA a terrorism-aiding organization? edit: the tone is lost via internet; my own opinion on this: yes, it is.

Is this supposed to be some kind of "gotcha"? Both are despicable.

Exactly, lol. Not sure if the GP comment is trying to imply some sort of good comes out of the NSA.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#96

Post by whymauri »

kaonwarb wrote: post #17
bluetwo wrote: post #4

Wonder if NSO was involved in that leak of Bezo's phone data awhile back.

From Amazon Unbound, p.344: > De Becker then commissioned an examination of Bezos’s iPhone X. The eventual report by Anthony Ferrante, a longtime colleague of de Becker’s and the former director for cyber incident response for the U.S. National Security Council, concluded that the promotional video about broadband prices that MBS had sent Bezos the previous year likely contained a copy of Pegasus, a piece of nearly i…

Jesus Christ, this software really is a weapon.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#98

Post by jorvi »

londons_explore wrote: post #64
jjoonathan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like this is more a result of Amazon not being able to connect you with the right escalation path to verify & act on these claims than a considered decision to ignore them. Does anyone here know what an individual reporter should do? Is there an escalation ramp that exists but was so poorly marked that neither sloshnmosh nor Amazon support was able to find it? Does the ramp go through other organizations (e.…

Doesn't cloudfront generally act like cloudflare? Ie. We don't inspect your content. Law enforcement are the only people who can stop us hosting a site.

Cloudflare has taken voluntary action on sites 2 (or 3?) times now. They can no longer claim complete neutrality. I don't know about Cloudfront.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#99

Post by Scoundreller »

walrus01 wrote: post #24
justinclift wrote: post #2

Ouch. > The Amnesty report said NSO is also using services from other companies such as Digital Ocean, OVH, and Linode ... We've been using Digital Ocean for a few years now (sqlitebrowser.org), and they've been really good. Hopefully they look into this and take some useful action. :)

I have to say I'm not surprised that NSO and similar entities are using any CDN/large-scale hosting company they can find. The bigger the better, and spreading their stuff around as widely as possible with as much obfuscation in server purpose as possible. Such things are impossible or problematic to block/null-route without breaking many other things hosted at same AS.

Which is a sad state of affairs.

Want to run a service with few problems? Here are the 6 companies you better run it through otherwise you can’t guarantee anything.

Re: Amazon Shuts Down NSO Group Infrastructure

#100

Post by cinntaile »

lokedhs wrote: post #13
neom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "DigitalOcean" - sorry to be pedantic, it drives me absolutely nuts when people put a space between, especially publications.

There is another point if view, and that is that corporate marketing should not take precedence over correct use of language. Some languages tend to be more strict about this. I think it's particularly common to see English play fast and loose with the language compared to other languages. In Sweden, for example you will see media write Iphone, because it's a name, and names are capitalised. The same goes for Digital…

The media in Sweden use both by the looks of it. They do that for IKEA as well but it doesn't really make sense imo since it's an abbreviation of names. Both are made up language constraints anyway so I don't really see why the typographic rules of a language are more important than the equally artificial typographic rules of a company name.
Post reply on HN