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Comment by s_dev | Hacker News Reader

So I just have to buy a US phone to evade detection from NSO? And why didn't that logic work for US State Dept phones?

I'm honestly of the opinion there is nothing that NSO can say that isn't outright lying. This isn't a normal company in anyway.

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I remember reading that some Russian (private sector) computer viruses did not attack computers whose language and locale were set to Russia. It's never about ethics. It's always about making as much money as possible without pissing off powerful people and entities.

Yep, Krebs on Security wrote "Try This One Weird Trick Russian Hackers Hate" -- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/try-this-one-weird-trick...

Crudely, we would say "don't shit where you eat". I've heard from the early (as in, 80's) hacking days some of the people in the US would never hit targets in their own state, as there wasn't good federal-level enforcement nor inter-state collaboration. Of course that would backfire today because you're immediately commiting crimes across state lines...

I had this with a Chinese app. Works well on a Chinese language phone, downloads an extra package if not.

* A US Phone will route your call via NSA servers[1], so yeah thats OK from the US governments side

* Publicly at least, NSO acknowledges there are state level agreements, the latest one with France, to block entire country codes from Pegasus (in return, France has stopped all legal action against NSO)

* According to Israeli Channel 12 reporting on this tonight, the official NSO response also includes the statement that the accused numbers in the report were not +1 numbers. Their so called "customers" were targeting US government employees using African area codes. NSO claim they have completely disconnected said customers from the system

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

>And why didn't that logic work for US State Dept phones

They had Ugandan numbers, as they lived in Uganda.

> And why didn't that logic work for US State Dept phones?

These were Foreign Service officers stationed in Uganda, so their phones had local Ugandan phone numbers. Some of them were working out of DC but - given the nature of the State Department (which is like America's foreign affairs department) - probably traveled very frequently and so maintained a Ugandan phone number as well, to save on roaming fees when making calls in Uganda (saving money for the taxpayer) and also so Ugandan officials can contact them easily.

This is not unlike Apple hardware engineers who travel frequently to China and have a Chinese number in addition to their main US number, so people in the factory can communicate with them easily.

> So I just have to buy a US phone [number] to evade detection from NSO?

This is NSO's claim. Presumably because they want to make it difficult for anyone to sue them in a US court. It's plausible but I don't necessarily believe them either.

I want this company bankrupted out of existence, personally. Apple's lawsuit against them may well result in that outcome.

Yeah, this.

They started off with the arrogance of a liar who thought they were immune from consequences. Now they're looking more like the kid who is actually in trouble only now realizing nobody trusts them to identify the sky color, let alone defend themselves.

Anything and anyone coming out of that shop is tainted.

Phone hardware is not tied to any particular number.

So you just need a SIM with a US number and use that for all your evasion needs.

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