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

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/the-secret-uganda-deal-that-has-brought-nso-to-the-brink-of-collapse/

by dwynings • 5 years ago

238 138 5 years ago

arstechnica.com

fennecfoxen2• 5 years ago

https://archive.md/At4rC

In February 2019, an Israeli woman sat across from the son of Uganda’s president, and made an audacious pitch — would he want to secretly hack any phone in the world? [ ... ] for NSO, the Israeli company that created Pegasus, this dalliance into east Africa would prove to be the moment it crossed a red line, infuriating US diplomats and triggering a chain of events that would see it blacklisted by the commerce department, pursued by Apple, and driven to the verge of defaulting on its loans, according to interviews with US and Israeli officials, industry insiders and NSO employees.

Looks like Uganda tried to hack 11 US diplomats, which ended up giving away the game, and getting everyone upset — and for but a pittance in revenue.

pm902• 5 years ago

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 if this was a US company and not an Israeli one. Apple would still sue them, of course. But they couldn't be sanctioned by USG, right?

yardie3• 5 years ago

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.

trhway2• 5 years ago

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."

fennecfoxen2• 5 years ago

I guess if you have this perspective, you want to maximize revenues and IPO

Why would you IPO this business? Disclosures associated with the IPO might accelerate the expiration date, you don't need the capital, and IPOs cost real money, which you could instead move into your own pockets. What does it bring — besides lowkey defrauding investors, who don't know what they're getting theirselves into, so they can be left with a worthless business at the end of the game?

cjfd• 5 years ago

What would happen if it was a US company? Probably they would be forbidden from selling anything outside of the US. Remember what the US did with crypto exports for decades? Next, if you tried to investigate anything that it was doing, you would be persecuted relentlessly by the US government. Note what happened to Julian Assange. It really is not like the US government is a nice organization or anything.

KKKKkkkk1• 5 years ago

What would happen if it was a US company? Probably they would be forbidden from selling anything outside of the US.

That's just false. The NSA bought the Swiss company Crypto AG and has been selling backdoored crypto devices all over the world for decades before being found out.

HillRat• 5 years ago

A US company wouldn't be selling a CCL-restricted product to a foreign state without going through USG review -- or at least, they'd get to do that once, before DOJ comes in with the search warrants.

jessaustin• 5 years ago

...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.

Sporktacular6• 5 years ago

Would depend on the US government of the day. Hacking Team and Finfisher weren't US based, they attracted lots of shit from their governments and the EU where they were based. The reaction so far doesn't seem to be negative just because they are Israeli.

yardie3• 5 years ago

Which is odd because NSO made many assurances to the US govt they were in control of the tech and that US nationals were not to be included. Looks like they weren't in as much control as they stated they were.

pm902• 5 years ago

Yeah, it looks like they used a pretty basic whitelist:

In this case, all 11 targets were using Ugandan numbers, but had Apple logins using their state department emails, according to the two US officials.

hermes83292• 5 years ago

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

yardie3• 5 years ago

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.

bawolff• 5 years ago

There's a pretty big difference between israel, the country spying on somebody out of national interest, and israel allowing what is essentially an arms-dealer based in israel to help random other people spy on countries they are allied with.

I highly doubt that israel the country wanted this turn of events, for the simple reason they are not stupid and the cost-benefit ratio of this seems bad for them.

vsareto• 5 years ago

Naturally, NSO will be blamed instead of the US govt for thinking that was actually possible. Especially after the shadow brokers leak.

matthewdgreen• 5 years ago

It is actually possible to not sell software that spies on US diplomats. Why, I achieve this goal every single day.

FabHK• 5 years ago

Maybe NSO didn't allow it to be used on US numbers. How are they supposed to know the nationality of the user of a phone?

NSO has always told its customers that US phone numbers are off-limits. In this case, all 11 targets were using Ugandan numbers, but had Apple logins using their state department emails, according to the two US officials.

perlgeek2• 5 years ago

How are they supposed to know the nationality of the user of a phone?

That's why you do recon before targeting somebody.

Do you suppose they just sprayed the malware onto random phones?

I get the impression that Pegasus is meant to be used in a very targeted way, at people you have identified before, and have some reason to spy on. If you do that way, what are you chances of wanting to target somebody else, and accidentally getting 11 US embassy employees?

NSO promised oversight, they can't just weasel they way out by saying "there's no way would could have implemented effective oversight".

shmatt2• 5 years ago

US nationals have never been protected. If you make an international phone call the government can track it[1]. If its internal they can't without a warrant

NSO built in a complete block of +1 phone numbers. But those US diplomats were not using +1. Which itself is a security issue that i'm sure is already being discussed at the state department

[1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/07/dea-bulk-tele...

wins32767• 5 years ago

Seems silly to call it a security issue when the bulk of the day to day activities for many state department employees is working closely with local nationals. Do you really want to make your average Ugandan caterer make an international call to the US in order to coordinate food delivery for an embassy event?

vaughnegut• 5 years ago

Would that imply that it would function as well for Canadian phone numbers, since they share a country code?

Terry_Roll4• 5 years ago

I think NSO are scapegoats, because how hard is it for a country to setup up a honeypot device to analyse NSO'a attack vectors and then copy it for their own use whilst being able to blame it on NSO?

I say this because I've had stuff done to my phones in the past, one strange incident with a "hacked" phone was selecting an AirBnB, which I believe directed me to a few of their "safe" houses. Other examples, include batteries going flat over night when asleep despite phone being switched off, not charging but was fully charged before it was switched off. The phone signal is weak when that took place so it would have burned through the battery amplifying the signal, but listening in to people sleeping can elucidate what might be on their mind!

azinman22• 5 years ago

but listening in to people sleeping can elucidate what might be on their mind!

Once you go conspiracy there’s no end to what seems possible…

jprd2• 5 years ago

It is astounding to me that a state as paranoid as Israel has leaned so hard into the far-right that they would actively sell some of that highly sensitive tech to other states that not that long ago had a death wish for Israel as a main position of said state.

A state born of hard-edged refugees escaping a world that had recently written them off to die, carried through several existential wars, and now they are EMPOWERING that same evil.

Also, please please do not trot out the "NSO isn't Mossad/IDF" nonsense. I wouldn't be surprised if all of this was a façade to penetrate the infrastructure of states that Israel wanted to monitor.

There has never been a more competent, sophisticated, and dedicated group than that of Israeli intelligence. To imagine that they would allow all this as an oversight without some state benefit is not something my brain can comprehend.

profstasiak• 5 years ago

Right now we have mini crisis in Poland connected with this US/NSO war.

One prosecutor, who is fighting for indepenend judiciary and against her political boss, head prosecutor Minister of Justice, smaller party Coalition member, got notification her iPhone has been hacked multiple time by Pegasus. She angried the rulling coalition, after she wanted to investigate illegal vote by mail election, that didnt take place at the end but cost Poland 23 mil USD.

The other person that was hacked more than ten times, is famous attorney, previous politician. He was an attorney of opositionfuhrer Donald Tusk, former PM. He was representing multiple high level clients that were suing the government, including one that was scammed by the head of rulling party Law and Justice. Hacking took place in times of campaign before elections.

Poland is such a crazy country right now. If you can write an email to ur congressman to fight for biggest US investment in Poland, TVN tv station that sheds light on this corrupt government. They are trying to make the owner (Discovery) sell TVN, worth one billion USD

mzs• 5 years ago

Could you please name:

One prosecutor, who is fighting for
The other person that was hacked more than ten times, is famous attorney

edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29648072

artek• 5 years ago

Roman Giertych is the attorney and Ewa Wrzosek is the prosecutor whose smartphones were hacked.

qnsi• 5 years ago

as mentioned by a sibling. You can read about it here https://www.politico.eu/article/polish-spyware-scandal-stoke...

pzo• 5 years ago

There is such a polarization right now in Poland between society that let's maybe don't put politics here. I don't like both the opposition and the ruling party but I try to at least read both sides of the story. You are definitely presenting very biased point of view here

simonh• 5 years ago

You are definitely presenting very biased point of view here

It’s not biased if the information is accurate, did the hacking take place or not?

That doesn’t mean I’m against your side, or for their side. I have no idea, I’m not polish. Both sides must account for their actions, but one side doing bad things doesn’t in any way justify the other doing bad things. That would be what-about-ism. If the ruling party in Poland used Pegasus to hack opposition phones, that’s scandalous and entirely on-topic for a thread about Pegasus.

user-the-name• 5 years ago

This attitude is how democracy dies.

riffraff2• 5 years ago

Hungary also had a scandal about the abuse of pegasus by the government against the opposition and independents.

As usual, the EU and the powerful countries who make business there have not made much about it.

People complain about the west enabling the Chinese communist leadership, but it's the same for every corrupt government.

WastingMyTime89• 5 years ago

As usual, the EU and the powerful countries who make business there have not made much about it.

You do realise the only reason Poland and Hungary still have voting rights in the EU are because they mutually block sanctions against the other one, don’t you?

The recovery funds are blocked and the EU executive is suing Poland for violation of the block law. I think they are doing as much as they can. Obviously from the point of view of a citizen of the EU just expelling Poland would be better - the extension championed by the UK was a terrible mistake after all - but it’s sadly not an option.

motohagiography2• 5 years ago

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 talks. NSO is subject to being a pawn on that board, it's plausible they get sacrificed and this is the story around it. It's a very weird place to be even lightly defending this company based on abstract principles, but they weren't taken out by some of the really egregious things they've done, and this seems fait accompli and we're just waiting for the narrative to complete. I suppose everything within a degree of the world they operate in is smoke and mirrors, but accepting the sanctimony around it at face value makes me feel like a rube.

kingcharles3• 5 years ago

You're absolutely right, and I don't think anyone else has made that point. The problem was the spies they tried to fuck with were American spies and American wasn't going to stand for that. As you say, NSO are now just a toy, and if they are destroyed thanks to this, no-one is going to give a fuck.

jprd2• 5 years ago

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 powers. Does that make them ethical? Of course not.

Technology like this is dystopian and anti-humanity. There is no way that this technology is profitable, exported and somehow used for "legitimate" purposes. The entire enterprise is predicated on making vulnerable people more vulnerable. The end result is more Khashoggi awfulness, how could it NOT be?

adventured• 5 years ago

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 of that either.

tptacek• 5 years ago

I think the general idea is that the USG doubtlessly conducts espionage on Uganda, thus making all formal employees of the USG fair game for espionage. Which makes a good deal of sense. The reason NSO spyware on State Department phones is upsetting isn't that it targets the State Department employees, but that it targets the USG.

sophacles• 5 years ago

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 because at least some of them are going to be intelligence operatives.

ashtonkem• 5 years ago

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.

kgonza4• 5 years ago

So you've never read the WikiLeaks?

dragonelite• 5 years ago

There's this joke people say the only reason the US doesn't have regime change factions is because it doesn't have a US embassy.

_qfhw• 5 years ago

I think the argument for legitimate application in Uganda is partly negated by allegations that political opposition was also being targeted [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/norbertmao/status/1463364241688305664

sudosysgen• 5 years ago

That's not why anything was done over it. If they had kept it to political opposition they'd still be using it today. It's specifically using it to root out spies that the US dislikes.

motohagiography2• 5 years ago

But that would be a scope shift, so if we're going there, now do Stingrays, PRISM, paralell construction, and FISA - but I won't say these are quality arguments. Outside this admitted whataboutism on my part, the very narrow defense I'm indicating for NSO in this specific case is it was within the sovereign right of this customer to use it, and it's only going to happen more often as this market is infinite.

I still think the Americans are just mad they got owned by Uganda. I'd bet this isn't the first time they have scored points against the low expectations of their "advisors," either so: well played. Point Uganda. I think this is a really funny precedent, and I can't believe I'm defending either of them, but the arguments back just aren't powerful when compared to demand for the tools of sovereignty, and we should give the conseqeunces of that due consideration.

kgonza4• 5 years ago

Uganda has a very capable domestic intelligence network and I would be surprised if all they were doing to these "diplomats" (spies for the US) is hacking into their phones. This has made the news, but it is the one of the least egregious things Museveni and his son - esp the son - have done in the past two or so years as they faced the strongest challenge to his rule ever yet. I am very sure that locals, particularly the opposition, had it much worse than American spies, although that most likely won't make the news.

Blackstone4• 5 years ago

Honestly, I think it’s simpler than that. The US does not want smaller nations to have comparable hacking and spying capabilities…

bestouff2• 5 years ago

So hacking phones for the US governement is ok, but hacking phones for Uganda is not ?

rmah• 5 years ago

Yes, according to the US gov. I imagine that according to the Ugandan gov, it's ok to hack phones of foreign govs but not of the Ugandan gov. In fact, I strongly suspect that for any nation X, it's ok to hack non-X gov phones but not X gov phones. I don't understand why this surprises anyone.

BrazzVuvuzela• 5 years ago

You're only feigning surprise.. right?

bestouff2• 5 years ago

Of course I do. I should have added "/s" ...

hn_throwaway_69• 5 years ago

You can't really equate the rules that should apply to full democracies with those that should apply to partial democracies or totalitarian regimes.

There's no evidence the US has used NSO like tools to spy on the opposition (post Watergate, anyway).

Partial democracies or totalitarian regimes shouldn't be given these tools under any circumstances since they can't be trusted to only use them to investigate legitimate crimes. They will present some bona fide use scenario, then use the tools for other undisclosed purposes.

If NSO Group had an ounce of ethics, it wouldn't provide the software, but would request a dossier/brief which outlines, with evidence, the basis on which intrusion into the target device is sought. It would then have an agent carry out exploitation. Political "crimes" should be refused service.

kgonza4• 5 years ago

The USA is a big supporter of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have waged a destructive war in Yemen. Ergo, the USA and it's leaders are largely responsible for what has happened in Yemen. Yet I am sure that you would argue that Uganda is authoritarian but the USA is a "mature democracy".

Lol.

optimalsolver• 5 years ago

Were the US officials that Uganda was spying on diplomats, or "diplomats"?

kingcharles3• 5 years ago

LOL, all diplomats are "diplomats" when push comes to shove.

TMWNN• 5 years ago

Yes, but you are correct in another way.

If the US diplomats Uganda used the NSO technology to spy on are intelligence agents, they still possess diplomatic immunity. They are in Uganda with cover (as opposed to non-cover; that is, they are in country without being a public US goernment employee).

seoaeu2• 5 years ago

Quite likely, answering that question was one of the top reasons why Uganda did this in the first place!

stefan_• 5 years ago

Surely if they were "diplomats" we shouldn't need Apple to send them a mail to know their phones are compromised (by such an obvious trojan, even)?

1cvmask• 5 years ago

There is a unclear reference to Intel in the article. Was Intel working with NSO?

"In recent weeks, for instance, Intel asked all its employees to cease any ongoing business relationships with NSO, one person familiar with the matter said. Intel said in a statement that it “complies with all applicable US laws, including US export control regulations”."

lazyasciiart2• 5 years ago

They would have at least a sales account.

cookie_monsta• 5 years ago

I thought the paragraph preceding that one gave the context:

The blacklisting, which came in November, means that NSO cannot buy any equipment, service, or intellectual property from US-based companies without approval, crippling a company whose terminals ran on servers from Dell and Intel, routers from Cisco, and whose desktop computers run on Windows operating systems, according to a spec sheet from a sale to Ghana, in West Africa

fouc• 5 years ago

when Google reverse-engineered the hack used against American diplomats in Uganda, they found an elegant, tiny piece of code that adapted software from 1990s Xerox machines to fit a so-called Turing machine — essentially a complete computer — into a single GIF file.

LOL at describing PDFs as "adapted software from 1990s Xerox machines"

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-deep-dive-i...

oasisbob2• 5 years ago

Having spent some time with OCR and scanning recently, I'd have to agree.

A lot of news articles are describing JBIG2 as something archaic, when it seems to be as relevant and commonplace as ever. (see MRC, for a modern application)

ciabattabread• 5 years ago

The article was originally written for Financial Times, whose audience will have a general knowledge of computing. Also, what the heck is MRC?

_jal• 5 years ago

They were talking about JBIG2, not PDF.

JBIG2 has been in the news periodically for a different sort of problem - you can't trust it to accurately represent what was scanned:

https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...

whizzter2• 5 years ago

The NSO exploit started by pretending to send a GIF, that was sent down to some decoder that did automatic file-type detection based on data rather than filetype and "correctly" detected an PDF, the Apple PDF decoder in turn supports JBIG2 images where the actual exploit lives.

dylan604• 5 years ago

Looks like Uganda tried to hack 11 US diplomats, which ended up giving away the game, and getting everyone upset — and for but a pittance in revenue.

Isn't this why most spy agencies are very afraid to use their most prized assets in fear of revealing the assets?

cycomanic• 5 years ago

The difference in response from the US to hacking of their diplomat phones compared to the response in Germany to the US listening on calls from Merkel and others is really telling. It makes you question how independent European countries really are from the US.

guytv• 5 years ago

Advanced technology was once held mainly in the hands of governments. In recent years, corps and mega-corps are getting far more advanced technology than the government has. For governments, this means loss of power. So governments around the world use whatever means they have to prevent such technologies to prolifirate. US govm't tried to stop the export of strong encryption. The it shutdown Facebooks crypto-currency - to prevent FB to have its own global-dollar. That's why the US just waited for the right time to end the party where dollars could buy you cyber abilities only reserved to the NSA and CIA.

It's not about civil rights, it's ont about money laundring, its just about the US trying to keep ahead of everyone else.

petesergeant• 5 years ago

brought in between $10 million and $20 million, a fraction of the $243 million

I mean I guess 7.5% is technically “a fraction”, but I’m used to this phrasing meaning “a really tiny fraction”

perlgeek2• 5 years ago

I thought the same, but then maybe the 10mio to 20mio was also distributed over several years, making it less than the 7.5% of their revenue.

vmception• 5 years ago

“We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” he told the friend

after $200mm in revenue, I love the cavalier nature of that. it humanizes the operation more than anything I've read

and NSO group is even at risk of defaulting on some loans, that it must have taken out for no reason aside from having extra totally fuckable capital to default on.

honestly, hope I run into this guy in Monaco and have a drink. just won't exchange contact information

selimthegrim• 5 years ago

This wasn’t what Herzl meant by the Uganda option I take it

eunos• 5 years ago

If you are excommunicated (sort of) by the US, who you could cling next? Only Russia and China at this point.

Sporktacular6• 5 years ago

“We always knew this thing had an expiration date,” (Hulio) told the friend"

This was clearly the plan all along. Such companies live and die by their low profiles. Was probably not the founders' first such company nor will it be their last.

Next step will be to close up, take the contacts, clients, capital, the lessons learned and the cream of the staff to whatever mercenary, unethical piece of crap they make next.

This is why killing the industry as a whole is so important. It'll mean going after the owners, suppliers and employees/contractors with naming/shaming, coordinated sanctions, criminal charges, designated persons lists etc. until their reputations are trash. No bank would fund it, no parters would supply it and no one with any talent would ever contemplate such a catastrophic career move in future.

FpUser• 5 years ago

"It'll mean going after the owners, suppliers and employees/contractors with naming/shaming, coordinated sanctions, criminal charges, designated persons lists etc. until their reputations are trash."

What a brave approach. Especially in regards to employees. This would close down every other major US company.

programmarchy• 5 years ago

They knew what they were doing. And I don’t see why major US companies deserve much sympathy if they’re as bad as you say.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 5 years ago

"every other major us company" how do you figure? Are most major us companies selling exploits at all, let alone to rogue states?

post_from_work• 5 years ago

"This is why killing the industry as a whole is so important. It'll mean going after the owners, suppliers and employees/contractors with naming/shaming, coordinated sanctions, criminal charges, designated persons lists etc. until their reputations are trash. No bank would fund it, no parters would supply it and no one with any talent would ever contemplate such a catastrophic career move in future."

And no government of any geopolitical significance would ever support such actions. These kinds of people, and their skills/tools, are FAR too useful.

saiya-jin• 5 years ago

Yet here we are, useful or not. I applaud these kind of movements, since this company's actions were clearly amoral and they supported anybody with enough cash, mass murderer or not.

All those actions mentioned by OP dissuade talent, since when you are on the top you have tons of interesting choices. Why work somewhere you are actually ashamed of to even mention. Why on top of that working for amoral goals that make world a much worse place, innocent people get killed just because of your work etc.

Those talents will find some work easily. Maybe even for competition. But its the right move, the more the better.

Sporktacular6• 5 years ago

Why? They'll still be put to use. Just not via a for profit industry creating an arms race between middling powers.

If anything it will make recruitment by significant governments easier.

HomeDeLaPot• 5 years ago

Phones should be secure. There will always be people with the talent and desire to attack them—if not private, then state-sponsored. There needs to be more engineering work put into finding vulnerabilities, patching them, and preventing more.

AtlasBarfed3• 5 years ago

The industry being comprehensively destroyed: that won't happen. Too useful to the wannabe masters of the world in the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and, well, I guess the true "richest people in the world": despot leaders of large economies.

A better question is that while these companies are basically cyber weapons companies, what do the truly big players have: the US and China? We got a glimpse with the viruses targeting hard drive firmware and others, but maybe they are lazy because they get to enforce backdoors.

Sporktacular6• 5 years ago

Why not? Mercenary tech didn't exist 15 years ago, so it's not like an industry is needed to create useful state hackers. Top talent would just continue to be nurtured in-house in more accountable government agencies.

Thorrez• 5 years ago

It'll mean going after the owners, suppliers and employees

Facebook banned all NSO employees from Facebook. The Israeli courts forced Facebook to unban them.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3837077...

ggm• 5 years ago

If you replace your handset, keep your SIM, how does NSO recapture you? I don't understand how rich powerful technocrats get stung so often: surely the path out is to swap device and move on?

I should be clear I do believe they are being recaptured. I just don't understand how. In the pre digital world, most phone steals were inside jobs: somebody leaked info leading to a voicemail hack or a stingray type cell listen in. Post digital, i suspect a lot of things are still inside jobs, but on phone compromise feels like a problem moving platform solves.

MicCheck• 5 years ago

NSO used a zero-click exploit. Swapping the device for another vulnerable iPhone wouldn't put up much of a hurdle. They'd just a message with the exploit an reinfect the phone in under 30 seconds. Changing the phone and SIM would only work until the new phone number became known. For high-value public targets (with lot of contacts) it porobably won't take long until the new number leaks again.

fortran772• 5 years ago

You would think Apple, the company that makes the platform which enables all this, would be held accountable too. But people turn a blind eye to their false claims of a secure platform.

danny_codes• 5 years ago

If I leave my bike locked up outside my office and come back to find it's been stolen with a handheld circular saw, I don't see how that's my fault. I implemented a reasonable level of security, but there's not much I can do against a circular saw.

iOS is massive. Operating systems are massive, from an attack-surface perspective. NSO is hiring out of the Israeli intelligence pool: these are among the best security engineers in the world. They don't always find exploits (IIRC there are some versions of iOS they don't have hacks for at a given time), but the game is in their favor, simply because the OS is, well, the size of an OS.

fortran772• 5 years ago

Apple advertises it as "secure by design."

See: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/site/AAW_Platform_Securi...

AtlasBarfed3• 5 years ago

What chance do our voting machines have against this level of state sponsored weaponry?

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

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