Dozens of Al Jazeera journalists allegedly hacked using NSO Group spyware
theguardian.comWhy are companies that stockpile zero-days for resale legal? Aren't they also a threat to the countries that host them, even if some or all of the intelligence is shared?
And why aren't countries that host these companies sanctioned?
I'm willing to go one step further and say that NSO Group is operated by and is a core part of Israeli intelligence. It just has layers of deniability baked into the business structure like any good limited liability entity.
What it comes down to is that with NSO group:
1. Israel has access to the best 0-days it needs
2. The knowledge to develop further exploits is maintained within the Israeli intelligence apparatus
3. Israel is able to dominate the digital intelligence apparatus of autocratic regimes and, as a consequence, be able to defend itself against those tools
4. Israel is able to use it as a back channel for establishing and maintaining relationships, as well as exerting power and leverage on those nations
Given that it is an Israeli-government entity, much like the rest of the Israeli government, it is politically untouchable and buried under layers of denial. It's a direct, toxic exploitation of the relationship that Western countries maintain with Israel.
The same reasons that the companies that make guns, bombs, and tanks are legal.
NSO is owned by a European company Novalpina Capital with headquarters in London.
My original comment asked if we should assume that the NSO Group arsenal is shared with the Israeli Intelligence Community, given that we've talking about an Israeli company.
That's a valid question, because hosting such a company is a major diplomatic liability. Why would you consider this question, as you said, a slander?
Israel sure does siphon off intel with all their companies, but it's not strictly limited to just them though.
Also it's definitely not slander, they always just seem to get pissy anytime one calls them out.
But they are not an "Israeli Company". They are owned by a European Private Equity group, with HQ in London, despite what the Guardian's "reporter" "Jassar Al-Tahat" says.
Should we assume that comments and logs for Hacker News are all shared with the UK Intelligence Community because Paul Graham was born in Weymouth, UK?
> But they are not an "Israeli Company". They are owned by a European Private Equity group, with HQ in London, despite what the Guardian's "reporter" "Jassar Al-Tahat" says.
Yes, Novalpina Capital purchased a majority stake in NSO Group in February 2019. NSO Group was and still is an Israeli company, with headquesters in Herzliya, Israel. The company will cease to be an Israeli company, when it stops being under the jurisdiction of Israel.
Again, I don't understand how any of this made my question a slander. And why are you mocking the author of the article?
> Should we assume that comments and logs for Hacker News are all shared with the UK Intelligence Community because Paul Graham was born in Weymouth, UK?
HN and Paul Graham are not in the weapons trade business, but yes, you should assume that all of this is monitored, though not because of Paul Graham's place of birth.
Technically the joint venture between Novalpina Capital and two of the original founders have a majority stake on the company.
Is ARM a Japanese company because it's (currently) owned by SoftBank? Will it be American when Nvidia takes over? Or are they a British company because they are based in the UK?
To add a personal note, I came here to ask questions, to learn something new, and to try understanding how any of this is allowed to happen. You've ruined my experience and this thread for no reason. Please don't ever do that again.
Especially because this hasn’t been the first time the commenter has done this. ‘fortran77, you’ve been around here a while. You should know better than to engage in pedantic nationalistic battles.
Journalists as messengers have always been targeted, and even killed, and it seems that Apple’s messaging system was the attack vector here.
While the article decries NSO for being nefarious and selling to suspect “authoritarian” countries, high schools here in our democratic US have been buying hacking solutions to spy on students:
https://gizmodo.com/u-s-schools-are-buying-phone-hacking-tec...
Less than a decade ago NSO Group assisted the then president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, in spying his political adversaries. Around the same time Martinelli requested similar assistance from the US, but they refused his request (according to Wikileaks).
Journalists can't seem to keep up with the latest threat model material. I'm wondering if a resource for journalist training is a good idea considering the resources stacked against them.
Many journalists who are frequently engaging in conversations that would be deemed highly sensitive are keeping up with the latest thread model material and following best security practice, moreover, the circumstances we know in this case make me question if any individual outside of the most security paranoid, could have prevented being hacked in this way.
This was an iOS 0-day that appears to have targeted iMessage [1] and worked via zero-click, meaning user interaction wasn’t necessary. CitizenLabs says that in one case, the initial vector appears to be Apple’s own servers.
So you’ve got people with modern (if not the latest) phones running the latest software on what is considered to be the most secure mobile operating system and you have highly-targeted attacks that appear to be state-sponsored, with high precision, going after these individuals.
What could education do to help in this case? Literally every single person I know, and this includes some extremely sophisticated security experts, would have been victims here too.
In the abstract, I agree with more training — though I’ll offer that these resources are widely available already in many newsrooms — but in this case, it would have done nothing.
[1]: https://citizenlab.ca/2020/12/the-great-ipwn-journalists-hac...
More of a failing of AJ's IT dept than anything else. Not sure if they were using AJ issued devices but they should be on managed devices that get updated on schedule, which may have mitigated this attack. Journos aren't necessarily deeply technical folks, that's really not their core competency.
Read the details on this attack. They were running the latest software. I wouldn’t be surprised if the devices were managed in some way too. It doesn’t matter. This highly-targeted attack couldn’t be mitigated and that’s exactly the point.
??? From TFA?
> Researchers at Citizen Lab said the apparent malicious code they discovered, which they claim is used by clients of Israel’s NSO Group, made “almost all” iPhone devices vulnerable if users were using an operating system that pre-dated Apple’s iOS 14 system, which appears to have fixed the vulnerability.
Edit: and that's almost not relevant to my point - what I'm saying is that journalists aren't inherently technical people, and that the work of reading reports on the latest exploits and vulnerabilities and developing countermeasures should probably go to someone else in their org
And my point is that with this attack, that wouldn’t matter. The exploit was state-sponsored and specifically targeted and was going after even up to date (at the time) devices. Citizen Lab was only able to glean as much information as it was in one case because the journalist reached out 7 months before he was hacked and they gave him a VPN they could use to monitor his traffic logs. The journalist was a key part of figuring this out, which goes against your entire point that the IT department would have caught this.
They wouldn’t have and they didn’t. This isn’t a scenario where you can blame lack of information or talk about who is or is not inherently technical. It was state-sponsored targeted hacking.
When you work in a sensitive environment such as the middle east as a journalist, one really needs to go overboard and keep an insulated protection layer - separate devices, clean contacts, Tor and VPN, the whole gamut. It is the journalist's responsibility in such environments to ensure their survival and make sure that they don't engage in something stupid.
I presume AJ, just like the others, tends to use a lot of freelancers - in fact, they pay out some of the highest commissions to freelancers. Most freelancers are responsible for their own lives.
Everyone is.
Join NSO! Protect your favorite colonial interests without the stigma of working for big tech!