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Comment by kakacik | Hacker News Reader

"with spyware" - a small addition. What about state actors, what about (semi)private israeli companies selling their solutions happily to all regimes regardless of consequences, what about any other kinds of hacks? As an european, by far the biggest threat to me are US state actors.

It would be such a good PR if they could just claim nobody has been hacked, period but I don't see that anywhere.

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As I understand it, "mercenary spyware" is Apple's preferred euphemism for the "(semi)private israeli companies selling their solutions happily to all regimes regardless of consequences"

No amount of hardware/software hardening will save you if you delete "with spyware" and replace it with "with social engineering". If there have been cases of people being hacked through social engineering, it would be dishonest to make a blanket statement "nobody's been hacked", but it doesn't detract from the effectiveness of the technical measures.

https://xkcd.com/538/

A state actor will just kidnap your kids or throw your wife out a window.

A state actor will do those things if they're willing to be overt about their actions. Many aren't, both for the sake of preserving their image, and due to tactical concerns (e.g. you don't want to kill the golden goose).

The point of spyware is that the target isn't aware of it.

You won't see that anywhere without their usual procedure of redefining the problem definition.

Sorry but you still need to be wary of state actors and the handing over of data to authorities, which is a far simpler approach than breaking security boundaries. The hacking statement is pure marketing.

This is overly reductive, black-and-white thinking.

Yes, it is impossible to be 100% ironclad secure from all possible methods of either digitally surveilling you or exfiltrating your data.

This does not mean that measures like those in the iPhone's Lockdown Mode are not genuinely helpful to a subset of the population that is at high risk for certain types of attacks.

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