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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers. But apparently also by Israeli developers with their government's blessing and open endorsement. That's some very shady stuff.

Before someone says something about government surveillance of fiber cables. Yes, that is also bad, but exploiting vulnerabilities to install spyware on peoples phones... It crosses yet another line that shouldn't ever be crossed.

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All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers. But apparently also by Israeli developers with their government's blessing and open endorsement. That's some very shady stuff.

Gamma Group is an Anglo-German company that provides similar surveillance software with government blessing and endorsement. Hacking Team (Italian company) sells similar surveillance software to various European governments. Before an embarrassing data breach in 2015 they also used to sell surveillance software to various totalitarian regimes outside Europe.

> Before an embarrassing data breach in 2015 they also used to sell surveillance software to various totalitarian regimes outside Europe.

Why do you think they stopped selling to those regimes? (I didn't follow the issue after it disappeared from the news)

If i remember correctly, the Italian government at the time made some noise - they weren’t happy to find there was no exclusivity in the relationship, so to speak. They kinda threatened to cut their contracts. To be honest I don’t know how it ended, it fell off the news in Italy too and that was it. Behind the façade of barely-organised anarchy, Italy is an instinctively authoritarian country and blunt instruments are considered fair game more often than not.

There was Stuxnet, which was almost certainly a joint US/Israeli operation (likely other minor players involved), and plenty of other programs we never hear about.

>All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers.

You've led a very sheltered life if you think the Russians and the Chinese have been more evil than the Americans or the Israelis. I suggest reading history - a lot of it. When it comes to governments there are no good guys, only bad guys.

I’ve read a lot of history. Your last statement is kind of fair. Your first statement is not. (Does eg US imperialism make Roosevelt no better than Hitler? Of course not.)

The Russians and Chinese are doing many things worse than what the US does: Ukraine, the Uighurs.... Both are far less bound by the rule of law. Neither have any serious form of democracy.

False equivalence is a specious but dangerous form of reasoning.

The US has killed millions of people in the last 15 years alone in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and a dozen other countries that we have bombed or invaded (including the 8 we are bombing right now). I'm under no illusions about the many despicable things done by the Russians and the Chinese, but its simply absurd to contend that their behavior has any worse than the United States. We have more of our citizens locked in cages than Russia and China combined. We have toppled more governments and invaded more countries than Russia and China combined by a factor of 10 (or more) since the end of World War II. Its astounding how willfully blind people can be when it comes to their own government. We can't become the good guys until people wake up and acknowledge that there haven't been any good guys.

> We have toppled more governments and invaded more countries than Russia and China combined by a factor of 10 (or more)

Russia/Soviet Union is roughly on par with the US on the invasion/occupation/regime change count -- of course they did it mostly in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and the MENA region rather than in Latin America.

The US has not killed millions of people in the last 15 years that is just a blatantly false statement. A quick search on Google or Wikipedia will refute your claim instantly.

Can you provide a decent source for your millions of casualties claim or for you claim about the US toppling more Governments than Russia/China? I bet you can’t.

Judging by your username I believe you know some things about history. Why spread false info?

Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PRS) released a landmark study concluding that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as 2 million.

https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pd...

It's not that hard to believe surely? There have been plenty of other reports showing similar numbers.

Roosevelt personally? No. America as a whole? Yes, comparisons can absolutely be made between America's and Hitler's genocidal philosophies, as the former influenced the latter[1].

1. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-r...

> Before someone says something about government surveillance of fiber cables.

Anything that goes unencrypted over the internet is (a) public and (b) liable to be changed by anyone on transit. It's like a travelling wikipedia article.

I would be shocked if any moderately wealthy government hasn't crossed that line. This is child's play for cyber warfare.

I remember when "spyware" was just malicious advertising programs designed to sell your browser history + replace ads.

(Eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoolWebSearch)

The MySpace era was a simpler time...

And the US government's blessing. Along with the UK, this is how the US indirectly spies on its own citizens.

I love how you’ve been convinced that Russia and China are naughty and Israel is somehow too good to be shady.

Well, the first half of that statement seems undeniably true.

Absolutely. But no more naughty than USA or Israel, as far as I can tell.

Hmm, I don’t want to get into a state wickedness bidding war, but the US/Israel are democracies where you are unlikely to be eg locked up without a fair trial. Contrast with the fate of the Uighurs.

In foreign policy it’s more balanced (supporting Syria vs Saudi Arabia) but even there, Russia is clearly trying to subvert foreign democracies. China is (perhaps reasonably) pushing for more power in Asia. And while the US support for human rights is patchy, China’s is non-existent.

Then there’s the Palestinians... (sigh)

Story time.

A close friend of mine was held in custody in the US based on false accusations by a police officer.

The police officer later admitted the false accusations to the judge, that he just wanted to "scare him a bit". The judge nodded, proceeded to aquit him of all offenses exept the speeding ticket which he deserved, and off he went.

Yeah that's local corruption and still far away from what the Uigurs have to go through which is state policy.

And you think the US isn't trying to subvert foreign democracies?

Which democracies is Russia trying to subvert in ways the US isn't? You could argue that Russia is supporting nationalist movements in most of Europe, but there are very similar efforts from the US.

For example, in my own country, Romania, US religious groups stoked local religious groups to initiate a referendum to change of our constitution to ban gay marriage (they actually made it through all the steps and the referendum was held, but so few people showed up to vote that it fell through). Would this count? It was done through false news and propaganda (and probably some minor corruption, but that's just par for the course), but otherwise through legal means - same as all modern Russian influence in Europe that I've heard of.

Let's not forget that the US has explicitly assassinated its own citizens for 'suspicion of terrorism' as well, though they're at least not assassinating their own citizens on their own territory, and not in the kind of huge numbers that Russia and China are.

> US/Israel are democracies where you are unlikely to be eg locked up without a fair trial.

MKULTRA, guantanamo, Stuxnet, PRISM and other 3 letters agency abuses [0][1], &c. and that's only the stuff we know about.

> Then there’s the Palestinians... (sigh)

See: https://www.dw.com/en/trumps-golan-recognition-a-dangerous-p...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

[1] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surv...

Statistically unlikely, yes.

Grand total, you are talking about a couple thousand people over half a century.

China does worse in a month in Xinjiang. The excesses of western nations stand out like a sore asshole so badly because they are such exceptions to the general rule of law they experience.

To be fair it's not just about the software but about the country too. We know know China's policy on censoring the web. Russia is not the sort of place that tolerates activism against Putin. So when you combine this with hacking people's phones it does make it much worse.

Propaganda at work it seems

>All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers.

Yep, manufacturing of consent at play.

But this aside, I have a friend who worked in Israeli company whose main business was to sell phone exploits and customer data by using the still very insecure SS7. Basically they were registered as voip operator, but according to my friend that was only a cover, and the real business was selling surveillance data they were gathering via SS7.

Hey Zaro. The author of the FT article would love to have a chat with you and maybe get a quote for a follow-up article. His email is: mehul.srivastava@ft.com

work out what your enemy considers an uncrossable boundary - then cross it - gets them every time.

source - Art of War, probably...

Not at all, many EU countries produce such tools, some even commercially sold.

> All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers.

They're build by any government/entity having sufficient resources to build them, there is no good or bad guys in that story.

crossing a new line is a way to signal your opponent that you're unafraid of any and all of their potential retaliation. it is a way to tell them that (you think) you dominate them.

> That's some very shady stuff.

By them, I’m not surprised. And I’m not being anti Semitic. I’m just calling fact.

They managed to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges using a very sophisticated attack. Read up on Stuxnet.

Also, as an Israeli, I can 100% confirm that Israelis have absolutely no issues with crossing any kind of boundary. The fact that others think that such a thing as "boundaries" exist only serves as an advantage.

> The fact that others think that such a thing as "boundaries" exist only serves as an advantage.

Isn't this how villains in Marvel movies work?

"Russia has no boundaries."—V. Putin

Not clear whether you consider this a good thing or a disgrace?

Why do you think their opinion should be expressed in their comment?

Exactly.

As another israeli - certainly a good thing. For a nation in our position, in a deeply hostile region, where a major military defeat is certain to be genocide, doing everything possible for national defence is the only way possible to survive. Stuxnet in particular is something that I'm extremely proud of.

You say this as your country is invading and occupying land that doesn’t belong to them and murdering innocents to drive them out. Yeah, nice way to be proud.

very hard to think of any country that has NOT done this. History shows that people and their countries do bad things.

Not a very hard-hitting analysis.

True, but there is a difference between 'my ancestors have done this' and 'some of the taxes I'm paying are going into continuing the occupation; I've voted for the people who are ordering the air strikes'. There's fewer countries where that's true today.

whataboutism

This is a childish excuse.

Well, that's your interpretation of the events, and one-sided and not a very truthful one at best.

It is the interpretation of all of the international community except for the US and Israel. The UN has repeatedly voted to recognize this, often being blocked by the US. There is no real controversy on this.

Edit: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

The entire UN Security Council officially recognized this, with even the US not using their veto power (they abstained).

I'm well aware of UN position on Israel, I just don't understand how anyone who knows how this organization operates can pretend it represents "international community" or has any moral authority.

You characterize it as a superficial institutional opinion rather than the judgment of the vast majority of humanity.

So when you say that stating there are no boundaries is a good thing for Israel, would you have held that same view in the 1930's and 1940's when most of Europe was busy trying to resist another organisation that also did not believe in boundaries?

Interesting to hear about this lack of boundaries among Israelis, is this only for non-Israelis or do you/they cross each others boundaries? Is this a cultural thing, why do you think this the case?

Israelis grow up with almost no notion of personal space. It’s just not a thing over there.

> Is this a cultural thing

Israelis in general are very blunt and perfectly willing to question superiors and voice opinions and questions in situations where Americans never would. This includes the military where subordinates would question a superior in a way that would never fly in an American military (and probably others).

Israelis on the street will voice opinions to strangers in a way that would be perceived as incredibly rude elsewhere, but is normal in Israel.

> Israelis on the street will voice opinions to strangers in a way that would be perceived as incredibly rude elsewhere, but is normal in Israel.

What do you mean, for example?

If they think you didn't dress your child properly they'll tell you. Or they'll hear you talking about something and give you advice on what to do without any embarrassment on that fact that they overheard you.

You're fighting with your teen, in the US everyone would turn away and pretend not to hear, in Israel they'll just openly talk to you about their own teen and what they did, etc. and then half the bus would chime in. They're all really nice about it mind you, just trying to help.

Israelis think of everyone as part of their personal family, even strangers are really distant relatives, is I guess a good way to put it.

> Israelis in general are very blunt and perfectly willing to question superiors and voice opinions and questions in situations where Americans never would. This includes the military where subordinates would question a superior in a way that would never fly in an American military (and probably others).

Well, they claim they are but you don't see anything at least from outside. From outside it seems they are easily buying whatever government is selling to them. Working on surveillance projects is rather embraced and you even receive strong social support for it.

So I don't get how do you compare it to the US! Whereas in the US you would have a hard time to convince people to work on surveillance projects and even then often people end up having a hard time with their moral values even when they are not directly doing anything wrong. Not to mention many anti-surveillance activists are based in the US. I believe that is a very unfair comparison.

The truth is every country you look people are a bag of goods and bads and they manage to find greedy people to work on surveillance projects even in the EU.

You have this strange assumption that people are supposed to find something wrong with surveillance projects.

> Working on surveillance projects is rather embraced and you even receive strong social support for it.

That's right, because there's nothing wrong with it.

> So I don't get how do you compare it to the US!

Because I'm not comparing surveillance projects, I'm comparing modes of speaking.

> Whereas in the US you would have a hard time to convince people to work on surveillance projects and even then often people end up having a hard time with their moral values even when they are not directly doing anything wrong.

Because it's quite obvious to the ordinary Israeli that surveillance projects save lives, so obviously they would want to work on it.

The US isn't under quite the same level of attack, although it's far from clear there is supposed to be something wrong with it in the US either.

I’m sure it was completely Israeli government involvement with the technologically advanced US playing no lead role. ...

The US provides the VC funding.

Story checks out

From what I've seen, they're not at all unique. Maybe they're more honest about it, though. And given that they're surrounded by enemies, they must maintain that reputation.

"I'm crazier than you are." has always been the US position re strategic nuclear weaponry.

> I can 100% confirm that Israelis have absolutely no issues with crossing any kind of boundary.

Is this a subtle reference to the Israeli occupation of Palestine?

My comment has nothing to do with Palestine.

Well, it applies perfectly.

I agree. Nobody should underestimate the Mossad: https://youtu.be/bJujIwtdk8w

From my favourite Usenix paper (https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf):

Basically, you’re either dealing with Mossad or not-Mossad.

If your adversary is not-Mossad, then you’ll probably be fine if you pick a good password and don’t respond to emails from ChEaPestPAiNPi11s@virus-basket.biz.ru.

If your adversary is the Mossad, YOU’RE GONNA DIE AND THERE’S NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. The Mossad is not intimidated by the fact that you employ https://. If the Mossad wants your data, they’re going to use a drone to replace your cellphone with a piece of uranium that’s shaped like a cellphone, and when you die of tumors filled with tumors, they’re going to hold a press conference and say “It wasn’t us” as they wear t-shirts that say “IT WAS DEFINITELY US,” and then they’re going to buy all of your stuff at your estate sale so that they can directly look at the photos of your vacation instead of reading your insipid emails about them.

And:

Threat: The Mossad doing Mossad things with your email account

Solution: Magical amulets? Fake your own death, move into a submarine? YOU’RE STILL GONNA BE MOSSAD’ED UPON

(That's perhaps a little too light-hearted humor, considering the youtube link in the post I'm responding to...)

That is an amazing article.

Mikkens has a track record of writing stuff like that. It's worth hunting down and reading pretty much everything he's published.

Fun fact: The mossad ran a job ad on facebook a while ago, which involved a sequence of riddles. First discover a server based on some random seeming sequence of characters on an image. Then you had to solve a number of programming puzzles. I stopped at the third one, because I don't actually want to work there.

And now orbifold is on one of their lists...

Have fun in the submarine!

Suddenly I’m less impressed in the Mossad. Really they recruit hackers on FB?

If I do a quick samples of people I know, there’s a super high correlation in being a hacker/developer and not using Facebook. Maybe they should try HN instead.

classic Mickens. I just died laughing. thanks for making my day

> ...they’re going to hold a press conference and say “It wasn’t us” as they wear t-shirts that say “IT WAS DEFINITELY US,” and then they’re going to buy all of your stuff at your estate sale so that they can directly look at the photos of your vacation instead of reading your insipid emails about them.

That's basically Israel's attitude on anything: doing anything they want without any kind of boundaries, then denying brazenly they did it, while doing it again and again. Like having snipers shooting at thousands of civilians, kids, journalists, paramedics, who are protesting inside their own borders.

> doing anything they want [...] then denying brazingly

That’s actually a time-honoured Russian/Soviet SOP, currently embodied by Mr. Sergey Lavrov.

The USSR had a lot of influence on early Israel, and it shows in many little things like this.

I'd say it has more to do with the very Jewish concept of chutzpah. According to Wikipedia, the term is used "to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior" and "Chutzpah amounts to a total denial of personal responsibility, which renders others speechless and incredulous".

The term used to have a very negative connotation, but interestingly, Google says "usually used approvingly". It seems to fit pretty well the descriptions of the "rudeness" and "boldness" in common Israeli culture.

> It seems to fit pretty well the descriptions of the "rudeness" and "boldness" in common Israeli culture.

Also seems to be a pretty accurate description of SV/startup culture too...

> Like having snipers shooting at thousands of civilians, kids, journalists, paramedics, who are protesting inside their own borders.

Ugh... this is so myopic and sounds like you're intentionally not telling the truth.

all those "kids", "journalists", and "paramedics" were shown to be carrying bombs or other explosives.

Hm. All six thousand of them? Kids? Paramedics? Journalists? Do you have any sources for that?

I'd think the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths.

I'm not arguing that terrorists/soldiers/murders were killed, you are the one claiming that a reflective vest puts someone above the law.

On top of the 1000s of staged or edited photos/videos coming out of pallywood on a daily basis it's nearly impossible to take anyone making such claims seriously. as they are almost always full of misinformation/lies.

> the onus should be on you to prove that there were 6000 kid, paramedic and journalist deaths

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that all the people shot by snipers (not killed- just shot, usually in the legs and often causing permanent disabilities) were kids or paramedics or journalists. I was questioning your statement that "all ... were shown to be carrying bombs or other explosives". It's quite a categorical statement, and almost certainly wrong.

Ok... so again, show that there were 6000 kids, paramedics and journalists who were shot...

Also your unbridled hate for all things jewish kinda outs you as a biased party.

I would have labeled the article a piece of defeatism disguised as satire, if not for this:

Security research is the continual process of discovering that your spaceship is a deathtrap. However, as John F. Kennedy once said, “SCREW IT WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON.” I cannot live my life in fear because someone named PhreakusMaximus at DefConHat 2014 showed that you can induce peanut allergies at a distance using an SMS message and a lock of your victim’s hair. If that’s how it is, I accept it and move on. Thinking about security is like thinking about where to ride your motorcycle: the safe places are no fun, and the fun places are not safe. I shall ride wherever my spirit takes me, and I shall find my Gigantic Martian Insect Party, and I will, uh, probably be rent asunder by huge cryptozoological mandibles, but I will die like Thomas Jefferson: free, defiant, and without a security label.

This I like.

How do they differ from international terrorists then?

They're a government that the US recognizes, and that's widely recognized by other governments that the US recognizes. That makes them legitimate. Terrorists by definition do not include legitimate governments. Anyone that doesn't agree is a "terrorist sympathizer".

I don't necessarily agree, but that's just how it is.

But no "government" was involved. This is a private company with international investors.

Why isn't anyone mad at Apple who (falsely) advertises iOS as being "Secure By Design?"

> But no "government" was involved.

Huh? This is Israel.

And some of us are mad at Google and Apple for selling such insecure-by-design junk. By that I mean that apps are trusted more than (and can't fully be controlled by) device owners.

I don’t think the trust policy has much to do with this. At the end of the day, an app exploit is an app exploit, and if an app can make calls, an app exploit will be able to make calls too. As long as the exploit is not allowed to burrow in the OS proper, it likely wouldn’t be any different on Linux or a BlackPhone.

I guess. But as I understand it, it's much harder to lock down apps on phones than on Linux. Users can't directly control networking, for example. And have zero insight or control over the cell modem. Even doing a real firewalled VPN on smartphones is virtually impossible. And I don't believe that one can do VirtualBox or KVM or whatever virtual hosting on them.

> This is a private company with international investors.

Knowing nothing about the company in question, I'm still certain that most of its founders, investors and employees come from 8200. So, government doesn't need to be formally involved in any way, it's just the same social circles, everybody just knows everyone.

How is a hero different than a murderer? It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

What do you even mean by "international terrorists"? Is it what your government calls "international terrorists"? If so, then by definition they differ from, say, Al-Qaeda by the fact, that they are considered an ally by the USA (well, that, and that they have more resources).

Otherwise, it is your choice, whether you need a distinction like that. I don't see how it might be useful.

The Wired writeup on Stuxnet and the actors involved was an incredible read:

https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/

> Also, as an Israeli, I can 100% confirm that Israelis have absolutely no issues with crossing any kind of boundary. The fact that others think that such a thing as "boundaries" exist only serves as an advantage.

Maybe as an Israeli you can see the hypocrisy in stating that there are no boundaries when, if it wasn't for a large part of the world deciding that in fact there ARE boundaries that should not be crossed, the Nuremberg trials would never have been held and Israel would not exist at all.

But you go ahead and ignore your own history.

You're talking about a government that has a long track record of assassinating and abducting people in other countries, including Western liberal democracies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu#Disclosure,_a...

Whatever lines there were, they have long been crossed.

Abducting people in western countries unfortunately seems to be the norm in the war on terror, not only by the Israelis [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case

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