The Israeli spyware firm that accidentally just exposed itself

https://ahmedeldin.substack.com/p/the-israeli-spyware-firm-that-accidentally

by 0x54MUR41 • 5 months ago

288 297 5 months ago

ahmedeldin.substack.com

a2tech• 5 months ago

Top notch work. I assume the person picture is a test account, but it still shows how deep these companies can get.

This surveillance tech is a real problem--it's making everyone unsafe and should be regulated. I know its too convenient and useful for government/big companies so it'll never happen...but it should

flipped3• 5 months ago

Regulated by whom exactly? Since you can't even read, the spyware is being exclusively used by all govts of the world. Regulation never works, if you need a secure phone use GrapheneOS.

There's always a comment for "regulation" by an ignorant HN normie under anything related to surveillance. I feel like it's mostly bots at this point.

embedding-shape3• 5 months ago

Regulation never works

Woah there cowboy, sure you want such a broad and strong claim? Maybe you've eaten too much asbestos, breathed too much lead-gasoline fumes or otherwise inhaled something strange, because I'm sure there are countless of examples of regulation working just fine. Not to say it isn't without problems, but come on, "never"?

markus_zhang13• 5 months ago

"Regulated" in reality basically means your messages are not only read by private companies that collect them, intelligence agencies that access them, but also by people sitting in the regulation panels. When officials say regulation they basically mean "I want a piece of action, too, dumbass, otherwise I'm gonna shut you down!".

SiempreViernes8• 5 months ago

Yes, that's exactly how regulation works and is why everyone with a drivers licence are always complaining when the gu the government sent to hold the steering wheel that morning is late. /s

grishka2• 5 months ago

Or maybe, you know, we should stop writing security-critical software in memory-unsafe languages. Mobile devices not treating their owner as an adversary would also be nice.

microtonal5• 5 months ago

That's only part of it. That all security issues would be gone after writing code in a memory-safe language is a fairytale (though it does help a lot).

The other parts layered defense, reducing the number of privileged/non-sandboxed applications/processes, not shipping spyware/adware, etc.

Only Apple/GrapheneOS and to a slightly lesser extend Google Pixel are good at this. Many phone manufacturers still use the TrustZone TEE on the main CPU (rather than a separate security processor), isolated radios, hardware memory tagging, and dozens of other defense-in-depth features.

Obscurity4340• 5 months ago

Could you elaborate more on this?

lorakamina9• 5 months ago

How do you defend against supply chain attacks??? The problem is that Israelis and their firms have access to the full chain due to their influence.

microtonal5• 5 months ago

This surveillance tech is a real problem--it's making everyone unsafe and should be regulated.

The other thing is that people willingly buy phones full of spyware. E.g. quite many Samsung models have the Israeli AppCloud installed (supposedly to recommend applications):

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/11/budget-samsun...

Even though AppCloud itself may be for recommendations it apparently mines a lot of data and each such background application, it is another potential attack vector, and I suppose that the Isreali government can compel the company to use their software for different purposes (not sure).

In contrast to what some news articles state, some Samsung models sold in Europe also have it and nobody seems to really care about it (nor the persistent Meta services, etc.).

embedding-shape3• 5 months ago

Paragon’s founding team not includes the former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, it also includes former Unit 8200 commander Ehud Schneorson, exposing how Israeli intelligence expertise metastisizes into private markets.

Interestingly enough, turns out Ehud Barak was close to Epstein as well, frequently mentioned in the "newly" released files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Barak#Relationship_with_J...

ExoticPearTree• 5 months ago

Keep your devices always up to date and limit the number of apps you use (lower attack surface).

If paranoid, use a different device to access suspicios apps/sites with nothing on it.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm3• 5 months ago

How do we know it is not rigged with an explosive like the Pagers?

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763674

"Cohen (former head of Mossad) insisted that the publicly recognized success against Hezbollah was merely one element of a far wider, systematic deployment of sophisticated devices worldwide, although notably abscent in the Gaza Strip."

magicalhippo2• 5 months ago

Take it with you on an international trip or three. Surely those airport scanners will pick it up.

ivl4• 5 months ago

His claim there did not necessarily imply rigged explosives, but supply chain attacks either for surveillance or assassination purposes.

And his limiting it to "virtually every potential theater" would suggest that it's mostly present in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, most likely Iraq as well.

But let's be honest here, this isn't civilian equipment that's been compromised. It's supply chain attacks where the buyer is manipulated into buying goods that they've tampered with, or re-engineered. They weren't pagers anyone could pick up at Radio Shack. (Everyone who got hit was a target, or a direct relative of a target.)

foolserrandboy• 5 months ago

We know because we're not shooting rockets at them.

ignoramous• 5 months ago

limit the number of apps ... lower attack surface ... If paranoid

While true in general, super apps that do too many things and used by billions (WhatsApp, Chrome, TikTok, Instagram, CleanMaster etc) are big enough of an attack surface already.

Defenses (compile-time / runtime memory safety & control flow integrity, media coders/decoders, sandboxes, for example) are getting better & so exploits are getting expensive.

use a different device to access suspicios apps/sites with nothing on it

While using different devices is good enough, it requires the end user to maintain strict isolation (and sometimes may require appropriate features from the OS). Using burners is an extreme version of this practice.

dietr1ch2• 5 months ago

Burners seem extreme, but old used hardware still seems the best and only way you can sort of prove isolation on your own.

You can't trust software not to be buggy and both, hardware, and software not to be purposely compromised because "think of the children" (that the EFs proved to be BS).

gruez4• 5 months ago

super apps that do too many things and used by billions (WhatsApp, Chrome, TikTok, Instagram, CleanMaster etc)

One of these are not like the others...

jsheard• 5 months ago

And if you use iPhones and have reason to be really paranoid, consider using lockdown mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120

PlatoIsADisease7• 5 months ago

Has android been hacked?

I only know pegasus broke iOS.

I find it interesting that Apple has spun Lockdown mode from a 'we are terrible at security' into a feature for marketing.

Now when someone gets hacked Apple can say: "Well they weren't in lockdown mode, its their own fault."

Gosh I wish I was as good at marketing as Apple. They really need to sell their marketing team as a service. If they did that, I'd buy their stock outright.

iririririr3• 5 months ago

two last attacks from paragon for pixel devices uses the modem firmware. these things doesn't help much.

Aerbil313• 5 months ago

iPhone 17's and later offer the highest level of security in a smartphone: https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...

baklavaEmperor• 5 months ago

What stands out to me here is the pipeline. Israel has built an unusually tight feedback loop between military intelligence, private startups, and global markets. When that ecosystem scales internationally, it’s fair to ask whether partners are buying technology or importing unilateral leverage that only benefits Israel here.

hparadiz9• 5 months ago

Why is everyone surprised that a country of less than 10 million has a tech sector where everyone effectively knows each other?

helge92102• 5 months ago

I would put the upper bound on the population relevant to _the_ tech sector at 28000.

baq4• 5 months ago

Recently for obvious reasons I’ve started questioning everything. I imagine I’m not alone.

Let’s just say I’m even more of a fan of EU digital infrastructure moving to strictly EU countries, no outside traffic allowed.

meowface6• 5 months ago

Don't get me wrong, I get why they want to and it is probably a justified security concern, but it's also things like that which will probably cause Europe's economy to continue to stagnate while the US's will probably continue to soar even with Trump (and perhaps, later, Vance) completely destroying our international reputation and credibility and our most important political and scientific institutions.

The fact that the US can continue to economically do so well relative to others despite currently being run by some of the stupidest and most abhorrent people possible is... sad.

markus_zhang13• 5 months ago

I'd be super surprised if EU doesn't have similar "dashboards".

epolanski8• 5 months ago

EU law enforcement agencies regularly buy this kind of software, even if illegal!

The Italian Carabinieri bought Paragon even though they can't legally use it, because mass surveillance is obviously illegal and against our constitution.

And yet, nothing's being done.

mikrotikker3• 5 months ago

Balkanization of the internet. It was foretold.

helge92102• 5 months ago

tight feedback loop between military intelligence, private startups

It's just friends buying from friends.

lm28469• 5 months ago

Israel has built an unusually tight feedback loop between military intelligence, private startups, and global markets.

How's that different from the US? half of the big players started as three letters agency side projects

coliveira• 5 months ago

They're just too busy repackaging the same spying tech on different channels and then selling that for billions in the US stock market. Also knowing that US regulators won't say a single word, because how could they ever say something bad about these companies... It must be a very good business.

markus_zhang13• 5 months ago

It is probably in their blood because as someone surrounded by enemies you gotta be pragmatic and on your toe all the time. No wonder they are pretty good at intelligence collection. One of my previous bosses told me that people with highest scores join the intelligence staffs. Not sure if it is true, though.

SiempreViernes8• 5 months ago

One of my previous bosses told me that people with highest scores join the intelligence staffs.

Certainly the common practice of looting civilian homes and posting about it on social media implies something about their infantry.

Cyph0n17• 5 months ago

Surrounded by enemies of their own creation. It’s a beautiful cycle of aggression and self-victimization; a true ouroboros.

On the intelligence front, Mossad does a wonderful job performing extra-judicial killings using the dirtiest tricks you could think of. They’re also very good partners: almost every counter-intelligence outfit sings their praises.

dgxyz3• 5 months ago

As always, experience breeds competence. Much like Ukraine are good at drone warfare, Israel are good at missile defence etc etc...

belter4• 5 months ago

You should look at Israel deal for the F-35. They got the only F-35 unlocked and non dependent on the US software lock. They were never part of the development program like Norway, Denmark, Italy or the Netherlands so did not have to bear those costs. Norway, Denmark, Italy or the Netherlands, still had to pay for their F-35...

Israel paid 2.3 Billion for their F-35, but the US committed to buy 4 Billion from Israel defense firms, so concluding with a net positive of +1.25 Billion for Israel economy....all at the cost to the US tax payer. :-)

"F-35I Adir: Israel’s Custom F-35 That No Other Nation Has" - https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/04/f-35i-adir-israels-custo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

epolanski8• 5 months ago

This net positive argument is asinine.

You aren't burning money, you're getting services and technologies.

mupuff12344• 5 months ago

So the US basically got billions and billions worth of F-35 R&D for the price of 2B?

Sounds like a decent deal to me.

throway234232• 5 months ago

Paragon co-founded by former Unit-8200 commander Ehud Schneorson and former Israeli Prime-minister and defence-chief, Ehud Barak who tapped his long-time friend Jeffrey Epstein (a wealthy American financier and eccentric) to find him clients for his ventures in the US and across the world. That certainly is some tight-integration!

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-ehud-barak-le...

mikrotikker3• 5 months ago

The thing is everyone goes into the IDF. The smart ones get put into unit 8200 where they hone their persistent, iterative, troubleshooting skills. Then their service is over they leave and they've basically been trained in innovation and leadership.

Then they go about solving problems. Some of those problems are people dont have a good trustworthy pornsite. Some of them are their buddies that stayed in the military have a military related or adjacent problem.

Darknet diaries did a great podcast on unit 8200.

hparadiz9• 5 months ago

Pretending like this some gotcha is pretty funny. The effectiveness of the software hasn't changed. In fact the targets don't even know it's there.

Matl4• 5 months ago

90% of startups coming out of Israel seem to be some dodgy 'security' or spyware startups. This in addition to them boasting of having 'field tested' their stuff on Palestinians, which is also why U.S. cops go there for training. I suppose to learn from the 'real experts' how to suppress the masses.

dietr1ch2• 5 months ago

Israel is the British colonialism foreign base where the Brits and the US can dodge their own laws while developing their own "defence" hardware, software, tactics, and ideology.

rainworld• 5 months ago

British colonialism

So the Palestinians and Arabs thought a hundred years ago. It served them badly.

It’s not that US/UK and others don’t get anything out of the relationship, as you note. But the arrows have been mostly pointing the other way for a long time. Trump and his background, as well as Epstein/Mandelson/McSweeney/Labour are just the latest, blatant examples of how this works.

epolanski8• 5 months ago

Meh, imho it's much simpler: Israel has had insane security needs since it's birth, thus naturally security firms concentrated where there was an immediate market and testing possibility.

Which makes the failure of October 7th even more striking. It's insane Israeli leadership hasn't paid for this.

gruez4• 5 months ago

where the Brits and the US can dodge their own laws while developing their own [...]

Source that a large proportion of founders/employees are actually American/British? The more believable claim is that such Israeli startups are US/UK backed, but that's not as damning as it sounds, because US/UK is the finance hub, so thats where you expect funding to come from, rather than "colonialism foreign base" or whatever.

Pay0813• 5 months ago

Or maybe that's the ones you know about because it's what gets fearmongering articles written about in English and the rest is in Hebrew?

Matl4• 5 months ago

Except the English articles are not generally fearmongering, more praising of the 'bursting' Israeli tech scene. It's only when you look at what the startups do you realize what's up.

It makes sense in a way, most Israelis probably acquire a fair bit of skills and contacts as part of being in the military there. And because the military 'needs' to surveil millions of people it rules over without any mandate whatsoever, what better way to get a contract than to enhance the surveillance capabilities of the army once you get back into civilian life?

mathverse• 5 months ago

This is not true. It's just "dodgy security/spyware" startups are more open coming from Israel that they exist than the myriad of hidden companies that you never heard about because they focus on tailored exploits.

m0llusk• 5 months ago

That is some nasty garbage right there. The Israeli tech startup scene is very large and dynamic with including basic software development tools, wireless infrastructure, and so on. If anything it is more like 90% either consumer infrastructure or non-LLM developer tools. Whether it is politically advantageous to talk about or not, a very large fraction of all economic activity is still down the chain near the child needs bowl of rice level. Grandiose claims without support only obfuscate the situation instead of focusing on what needs to be done to protect people.

bell-cot• 5 months ago

90% of startups coming out of Israel seem to be ...

Not to claim that Israel is the land of saintly virtues - but if your news sources are inclined toward tech or polarized left/right politic, they make sure that's what you see. Wouldn't matter if 99.9% of actual Israeli startups were working to build better home bagel-makers, or gene-engineering perfect breeds of salmon for lox.

yes_really20• 5 months ago

To be clear, do you think it's bad to use technology to detect and stop terrorism?

Matl4• 5 months ago

Israel being founded with the help of terrorist groups like Irgun and Lehi and their current prime minister as well as former defense minister being wanted for war crimes, excuse me if I don't take their word as to whom they're fighting for granted. Especially not after what they did in Gaza.

rwmj• 5 months ago

Is this company a candidate for being "Jia Tan"?

flipped3• 5 months ago

Jia Tan wouldn't be interested in secret spyware firms. They hide their code in plain sight.

bpt311• 5 months ago

No need, they have plenty of 0-day exploits that don't leave discoverable traces.

halflife9• 5 months ago

Palestinians have long lived under one of the most extensively documented surveillance regimes in the world. The deployment of facial recognition systems, predictive analytics, and device monitoring technologies in the occupied Palestinian territories are widely documented by human-rights organizations and digital researchers.

At the same time Israel has world renowned success of thwarting terrorist plots, and best in class intelligence shared with other countries (like the many, many, terrorist attacks stopped in European capitals thanks to Israeli intelligence).

You can choose either surveillance, or terrorism.

lkey7• 5 months ago

When you choose build an apartheid, you choose surveillance, because how else would you enforce a top to bottom racial order on the populace?

When you end apartheid, you end 'terrorism' (legal and ethical resistance against having your life, land, and water stolen). History shows this to be possible, preferable, and moral.

mupuff12344• 5 months ago

History has also shown that whenever Jews are in a minority of the population something bad tends to a happen to them.

So a two state solution makes much more sense.

yes_really20• 5 months ago

When you end apartheid, you end 'terrorism'

Your theory has really not been borne out by reality.

Somehow Hamas committed October 7th and has fired tens of thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israel since Gaza was given in its entirety to the arabs.

Somehow Iran has been financing and arming multiple terrorist groups even though it obviously is its own country far away from Israel.

Somehow Hezbollah has fired tens of thousands of rockets at civilians as well.

Somehow the Houthis have been committing terrorism sa well and their flag is literally "God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel".

Yeah, I'm sure if Israel just stopped all the security measures on the West Bank, all terrorism would stop!

yes_really20• 5 months ago

Also love the refusal to even agree that words have meaning. You put scare quotes around 'terrorism'. Are you saying that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and a series of small terrorist groups, and a series of individuals did not commit terrorists attacks in Israel?

Terrorism is "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." - are you saying exploding bombs, knife attacks, and firing rockets indiscriminately against civilians is not terrorism?

Pay0813• 5 months ago

This "apartheid" claim never made sense to me. Are people completely ignorant to South African history? Israeli Palestinians are equal citizens. Black people in South Africa couldn't own property, couldn't vote, and often couldn't even live in the same building as white people.

expedition32• 5 months ago

You can choose a secular government with equal rights and opportunities for all or found a theocracy.

idop4• 5 months ago

That government, and its country, will be destroyed in three days.

hackable_sand• 5 months ago

You didn't even try with this one

clydethefrog• 5 months ago

There has been recent academic research (+ book) about how it's the opposite - Israel relied on foreign intelligence (Club de Berne) for it's most famous operations.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/140/604-605/777/8140798

[2] https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/histor...

markus_zhang13• 5 months ago

I don't see WeChat, which is weird, considering it has been out for decades and not particularly famous for being secure. Maybe it is rarely used by people in Western countries, I guess. But anyway the Chinese government can conveniently read your WeChat messages. Congratulations to all tech brothers and sisters who bring upon the love of governments to us.

microtonal5• 5 months ago

The example is from a Czech citizen, unlikely that they use WeChat (Line neither though).

markus_zhang13• 5 months ago

Yeah my thought, too. I'm also wondering whether they hire in-house engineers or mostly just buy it from some other places. Maybe they also hire people straight out from intelligence?

mrweasel• 5 months ago

Maybe it's just me being old, but it generally seems unlikely that 5 or 6 messaging apps. I can understand having both TikTok and Snapchat (plus a number of other social media apps).

My take is that this is probably a test account.

PlatoIsADisease7• 5 months ago

Stuff like that is wild to me. At least in the US, we have internal laws democratically elected that can force things to happen (Epstein transparency act for example).

In China, it can be illegal to even talk about changing the status quo.

When I see people on the internet saying things like: "Yeah screw the US, we just made a deal with China!" I wonder how oblivious they are to the domestic conditions in China.

markus_zhang13• 5 months ago

I don't really think there is a lot of differences between the two. China does have a heavy hand in regulating the chats, e.g. you could have your account auto-banned for whatever the reason, if the AI finds something. Sometimes it could as trivial as mentioning e.g. 8964 in a completely different context.

But I think this is more about China wasting resources on trivial things while the US wisely focuses on more important things /s.

gzread7• 5 months ago

It's funny you use the Epstein transparency act as an example of a law forcing things to happen, when the government is not complyibg with the Epstein transparency act.

miroljub• 5 months ago

If the Chinese government can read WeChat but not the actual government, which has unlimited access to our body parts, I guess we should all be switching to WeChat.

I'm fine with not criticizing China or Chi, as long as EU and US governments don't have access to my messages.

direwolf204• 5 months ago

I think you need to be invited by a Chinese citizen to use WeChat, and they're penalised (in the real world!) for inviting people who don't comply with Chinese law.

PlatoIsADisease7• 5 months ago

Questions:

Why hasnt this been used for stealing Crypto?

Is there evidence Android OS has been compromised? (I know Samsung phones had an issue)

Is there any evidence a Fedora, Debian-family, or linux has been compromised?

bpt311• 5 months ago

Why hasnt this been used for stealing Crypto?

Because the information obtained is much more valuable than imaginary tokens.

Is there evidence Android OS has been compromised? (I know Samsung phones had an issue)

I assume every OS can be compromised by a determined adversary.

Is there any evidence a Fedora, Debian-family, or linux has been compromised?

I'm not sure what evidence you would need, but see above.

PlatoIsADisease7• 5 months ago

Android and Linux's source code is available. So its easy to find flaws and report them. Linux has live a long time and hasn't had major security issues. (Sometimes you get a compromised vendor down the chain in a single distro)

But also, imaginary tokens are really really valuable. I'm sure there are normal-ish people with ~100-1000 bitcoin, let alone a few of the outspoken people who are bitcoin billionaires.

iririririr3• 5 months ago

this is an Advertisement.

those companies have very little technical know how. they are just money movers. they buy zero days and package them in a (likely insecure) dashboard.

now with PE and growth demand, they have to advertise something that is hard to advertise. hence these "slip ups" and articles.

PlatoIsADisease7• 5 months ago

Interesting marketing idea.

But yeah I don't think its anything too surprising about buying exploits and packaging them.

I think the article is more of a commentary on how these companies can exist in the open, where as a teenage hacker goes to jail for stuff like this.

iririririr3• 5 months ago

Wow. your threshold for a literal crime and imoral behavior is extremely low. I do hope you realizes that is weird and not normal.

epolanski8• 5 months ago

I've learned from a former college colleague that got into cyber security that Israeli intelligence facial recognition is virtually error free.

It has been trained on decades of Palestinians crossing check points, some being Hamas camouflaging with beards, glasses and what not.

Also the data it's fed for third party customers is as flawless as it can be: if you ever took an international flight your biometrics are fully recorded and available to virtually every agency in the world.

If you're walking in a random mall on the other end of the world, even if you have no phone, you have covered your tracks and you're wearing a hat and glasses, etc, you are going to be recognized by the software if a camera gets even a mediocre shot at you.

Compound this with all the information people put online on their own on socials, you're gonna be tracked and recognized, whether you want it or no.

nick_• 5 months ago

Is the Israeli intelligence facial recognition system in the room with us now?

epolanski8• 5 months ago

Oosto, Corsight AI.

sejje• 5 months ago

if you ever took an international flight your biometrics are fully recorded and available to virtually every agency in the world

Approximately what year did this start?

epolanski8• 5 months ago

I have no clue because my first extra EU flight has been in 2022 and I definitely got a full face scan.

riobard• 5 months ago

I used to think that the scenes of the TV series “Person of Interest” were exaggerated for storytelling purposes. Maybe not and it was accurate prescience.

pdyc• 5 months ago

i have doubts on accuracy of face recognition. There is already nancy guthrie case going on and if it is so accurate why are suspects still not recognized?

pear01• 5 months ago

You mean the the case where he came to her door dressed like death with his face almost completely covered?

Pretty extreme bar your setting. I would think most people would agree it could still have extremely (and surprisingly) potent accuracy and still fail in this case. I wouldn't expect facial recognition to work in a case when there is little to no face to work with... if that guy came dressed like that to any airport or mall he would've been detained immediately.

lp4v4n• 5 months ago

I believe that most of what you said is true, but I don't think the tracking of people around the world is as efficient as your post suggests. If a single face scan were enough to track people anywhere like that, American government agencies (I'm thinking ICE, the FBI, etc.) wouldn’t have as much trouble as they do arresting people. That’s just my impression of course, maybe for some reason they choose not to use these technologies.

peyton• 5 months ago

They need recall, not precision. It’s conceivably fine if you tag 100 people as long as one of them is your guy.

Also I mean you and I can recognize people we know. A surveillance camera has millions of sensors sampling every ~50 ms. It’s plausible.

somenameforme2• 5 months ago

I think these sort of claims of excessive competence are challenged by the October 7th attacks. Think about the massive amount of planning and organization that went into that attack over a period of years. There were thousands of forces engaging in some specialized and unusual strategies. Hamas even released a propaganda video more or less showing their plan with paragliders and everything. And they carried it out the day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. And somehow this all caught Israel completely by surprise. So either you have to go down a very dark rabbit hole, or accept that these claims of excessive competence are, at the minimum, exaggerated.

Similarly this would make things like evading law enforcement pretty much impossible, while in reality there are countless people, at least thousands, who have been photographed in relation to e.g. a crime, but never found, and never identified.

deaux2• 5 months ago

So either you have to go down a very dark rabbit hole

So even after "there's a child sex trafficking island where all the elites have gone to party for decades" you're still skeptical of that claim? Knowing about Mossad operations? With Bibi on the record saying

Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank

With most of the world's spyware, including Pegasus and NSO group, having hailed from Israel?

It's not "going down a very dark rabbit hole", it's the by far most likely option and therefore your whole comment makes no sense, presuming the much less likely option.

If we're still not at the point where we stop being this naive, my god..

YeGoblynQueenne3• 5 months ago

> I've learned from a former college colleague that got into cyber security that Israeli intelligence facial recognition is virtually error free.

What does "virtually error free" mean? There's no "error free" in facial recognition, or any other application of machine learning.

More to the point, who says all this, besides yourself in this thread? Why should anyone believe that "virtually error free" is a factual description of real technological capabilities rather than state propaganda?

epolanski8• 5 months ago

Those are private companies, so it's not state propaganda.

By the way, UK, South Wales especially claims an 89%+ success rate and 1 in 6'000 false positives, you can read it on UK's official website.

The company between Oosto claims 99%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-use-of-fac...

throway234232• 5 months ago

I doubt whatever facial recognition trained over 6 million odd Palestinians (plus 2 million Israeli Palestinians) would trump similar offerings from competitors like Hikvision trained on data of 1.4 billion Chinese.

edit : i think their tech is overhyped. Remember the signal-chats debacle last year where the National Security Advisor was photographed using a modified client of Signal by Israeli company TeleMessage. And immediately after, TeleMessage was hacked, and it was revealed that all the chats were transmitted and stored in plain-text. They still managed to get their backup-spyware installed at the highest levels of the US government and military. It looks like they have great sales teams.

https://archive.is/0qjVI

yes_really20• 5 months ago

A facial recognition model trained on one genotype will behave poorly on another genotype. For detecting e.g. white and middle eastern faces, this Israeli model should perform better than the one trained on Chinese people

gerash• 5 months ago

I'm sorry this sounds like hyperbole to say the least.

idk about their accuracy but "error free"?

Also do you understand the amount of compute and network bandwidth necessary to index and track billions of people by processing exabytes of streaming footage constantly with heavy computer vision models. who's integrating all these different camera systems to start with?

These claims sound like they come from someone who hasn't done these things in real life.

Tangentially, it seems like Israel tech scene has so many players involved in spyware/malware and surveillance.

zjaffee• 5 months ago

I mean, it's objectively true that they can do this, especially when even mildly filtered down by incoming external data.

It's why you no longer need to speak with a person when reentering your home country in a lot of different places (israel being one of them, but also the EU, trusted travelers in the US through global entry, ect).

YeGoblynQueenne3• 5 months ago

It's really unbelievable how much data most people put online about themselves. "Valentina" has probably shared all the information about here the alleged system dashboard showed. Any interested party would only have to search the open internet (and some walled gardens like Facebook) and aggregate the information found in there.

Spy agencies and spyware companies don't have some magickal tech nobody else knows anything about. They take advantage of peoples' careless style of interacting online.

Pay0813• 5 months ago

I've known people who were manually stalked through just information they posted to the internet. It really doesn't take anything more than a name and a few usernames.

ChrisArchitect• 5 months ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46979819

rhier• 5 months ago

How are they intercepting Signal?

gzread7• 5 months ago

They are attacking the end-point app on your device.

The Israeli spyware firm that accidentally just exposed itself

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