NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#1

Post by lladnar » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies
reuters.com

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#2

Post by TaylorAlexander » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

“WhatsApp did not identify the clients of NSO Group, who ultimately chose the targets.”

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#3

Post by tareqak » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21411403 is a later post, but uses the original title.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#4

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#5

Post by cloudyo » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

Sometimes you just feel like using Signal instead

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#6

Post by chadlavi » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

No one who wants to talk securely should ever use a facebook-owned channel in the first place.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#7

Post by denzil_correa » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

> Sources familiar with WhatsApp’s internal investigation into the breach said a “significant” portion of the known victims are high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries on five continents.

Welp!

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#8

Post by cloudyo » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

Welcome, Signal

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#9

Post by milofeynman » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

The article doesn't really say what hackers had access to, but it sounds like they had full control over their phones. There is a lot bigger story here and I'd love to read a post-mortem in a few months.

Also, WhatsApp is such an obvious target for a state actor. I saw several articles of the last year that mentioned Jared Kushner using Whatsapp so I assume a lot of government folks use it for off the books "encrypted" communication.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#10

Post by gpm » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

chadlavi wrote: post #6

No one who wants to talk securely should ever use a facebook-owned channel in the first place.

It depends who your adversaries are.

It's one thing to say "they shouldn't use a facebook channel to talk securely", it's another to say "they shouldn't use a facebook channel on the same device as they use another channel to talk securely". My understanding of this was that it is the latter.

Unfortunately people often don't have the luxury of doing the latter.