The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

https://www.ft.com/content/4636b35e-8844-11e9-97ea-05ac2431f453

by Turukawa • 7 years ago

72 13 7 years ago

ft.com

neonate• 7 years ago

http://archive.is/nQ5Fb

ukz• 7 years ago

Much appreciated!

seonsakke3• 7 years ago

kudos!

whatamidoingyo• 7 years ago

I remember speaking to a guy at a bar. He said he worked at IBM, and wanted me to write the software for an "unhackable" phone, that "never needs to be updated". I think I left shortly after.

ryanlol• 7 years ago

Why would an unhackable phone require update capability? A smartphone almost certainly would, but I don’t see why a simple dumbphone would require such.

upofadown• 7 years ago

The NSO Group's technology ends up being an oppression enabler in practice. Citizen Lab has been quite critical:

* https://citizenlab.ca/?s=nso+group

bhouston2• 7 years ago

I view working for NSO Group is no different than working for any arms company. And there is a lot of money to be made selling arms to despots and dictators. In part, because it is those leaders who have the least legitimacy are those who are the most insecure and feel need the strongest tools to solidify their rule.

Secure leaders do not need to stockpile arms, nor do they need to forcibly suppress their dissidents (which is what I understand is the main market is for NSO Group's tools.)

duxup• 7 years ago

Secure leaders do not need to stockpile arms

Well that can be more of a factor of what their foreign policy is / situation is and less about internal legitimacy.

Maybe better said they don't need to stockpile arms for domestic use as much if they feel secure / legitimate.

seonsakke3• 7 years ago

Great business model combination by these companies. The one focuses on hacking, the other on protecting from hacking.

I would think that the different national intelligence agencies would have high interest in infiltrating such companies.

bhouston2• 7 years ago

I would think that the different national intelligence agencies would have high interest in infiltrating such companies.

I bet in general non-governmental companies, especially with distributed offices, distributed sales teams, are especially easy to hack/infiltrate.

But NSO Group's target has never been other countries, it has been focused on helping governments infiltrate their citizen's and opponent's phones, which is a much softer target.

danny_taco• 7 years ago

It's quite clever actually, why spend resources to try and infiltrate them - which is not a guarantee, when you can pay a fraction of the cost for their capabilities so you can focus your efforts on other nation states or your own citizens.

seonsakke3• 7 years ago

Good point: I think the cost of buying the service is much lower than the cost of any covert operations or infiltration. (This is a pure guess.)

leandrod• 7 years ago

http://intactphone.com/

The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone

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