Discussion

• @jsrailton John Scott-Railton on x

  Takeaway from the #PegasusProject spyware revelations: If 10 Prime Ministers & 3 presidents can't be safe from mercenary spyware, what chance do the rest of us stand? Since the hacking industry is incapable of self control, governments must step up. https://www.washingtonpost.com…

• @geoffreyyork Geoffrey York on x

  Amnesty International: “We have long known that activists and journalists are targets of this surreptitious phone-hacking - but even those at the highest levels of power cannot escape the sinister spread of NSO's spyware... It should send a chill down the spine of world leaders.”…

• @mkvenu1 M K Venu on x

  Pegasus spyware, if not checked, may end up destroying the brand credibility of iPhone which is built exclusively around privacy. iPhone spends billion of dollars on its privacy branding. The current Pegasus episode may become an existential crises for iPhone.

• @poplak Richard Poplak on x

  Kinda wondering how the pro-Israel lobby in South Africa will spin this one. Regardless, it'll be fun to watch. https://twitter.com/...

• @tarunkhaitan Tarunabh Khaitan on x

  Will there be a truly independent investigation? Will anyone responsible lose their job & face criminal charges? Will India's institutions stand up for democracy? US President Nixon had to resign for spying on his political opponents. Pegasus seems *much* worse than Watergate... …

• @snowden Edward Snowden on x

  Let me be clear: export regulations, licensing, and reviews have been in place for years. They did not work, and cannot work. A moratorium on the trade in intrusion software is the bare minimum for a credible response—mere triage. Anything less and the problem gets worse. https:/…

• @reaproy Phil Robertson on x

  Time for both Israeli company NSO and spying governments to be held accountable for these serious abuses! https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @meronina Meron Estefanos on x

  Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization's director general, who also appears to have been of interest to Morocco in 2019.⬇️ https://twitter.com/...

• @andreasharsono Andreas Harsono on x

  Apple's stock price fell 2.4% by lunchtime amid concerns that NSO's #PegasusProject can infiltrate and take over the latest versions of iPhones without a single click from their owner https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @jsphctrl Joseph Cotterill on x

  Cyril Ramaphosa “appears to have been selected by Rwanda in 2019.” (A year when relations between Kigali and Pretoria were especially strained.) https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @markc_anderson Mark Anderson on x

  #SouthAfrica President @CyrilRamaphosa's mobile phone number is included in a leaked database at the heart of the #PegasusProject. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @safimichael Michael Safi on x

  NEW from #PegasusProject Emmanuel Macron identified in leaked Pegasus project data https://www.theguardian.com/ ... French leader among kings, presidents and prime ministers in leaked records

• @geoffreyyork Geoffrey York on x

  At the same time when Rwanda was demanding that South Africa normalize its diplomatic relations and arrest Rwandan dissidents, it was also using Israeli spyware to place President Ramaphosa's phone under surveillance. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @olivermathenge Oliver Mathenge on x

  South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa also among 14 world leaders identified in records. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @snowden Edward Snowden on x

  NSO has no way to know if anyone has done this in the past—or is continuing to do this right now. Exploit code can be caught and copied. Just as with a biological virus, it takes just a single digital infection for the possibility of retransmission—and mutation. Ban the trade. ht…

• @snowden Edward Snowden on x

  How else can NSO's country-code targeting prohibition be bypassed? Simple: 1) Target a specially-prepared device *you control* in an eligible country code 2) Forensically capture each exploit stage as it's served to your trap device 3) Reverse it 4) Retarget anyone, anywhere http…

• @campuscodi Catalin Cimpanu on x

  Phones of Macron and some French ministers targeted in Pegasus affair: https://t.co/PTek87ZAY2 Other heads of state and politicians listed here: https://t.co/rLX1ExLAoH

• @snowden Edward Snowden on x

  No one is safe from the out-of-control designer spyware industry. Export controls have failed as a means of regulating this easily abused technology. Without an immediate global moratorium on the trade, this will only get worse. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...

• @zackwhittaker Zack Whittaker on x

  An interesting takeaway is how NSO's customers, mostly law enforcement or intelligence agencies under their national governments, are often spying on politicians in their *own* government. Morocco is a known NSO government customer, and yet it spied on its own king. https://twitt…

• @washingtonpost @washingtonpost on x

  Prime ministers, presidents and a king found on list containing phone numbers targeted with spyware designed to track terrorists https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...

• @fbdnstories Forbidden Stories on x

  🔴 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔 𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 French President Emmanuel Macron and 15 ministers were selected as potential targets of Pegasus spyware by Morocco, according to the list analyzed by the @FbdnStories consortium and @amnesty. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...

• @maddowblog @maddowblog on x

  “It can read anything on a device that a user can, while also stealing photos, recordings, location records, communications, passwords, call logs and social media posts. Spyware also can activate cameras and microphones for real-time surveillance.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/…

• @patrickwardle Patrick Wardle on x

  The individuals who work on the security teams at Apple are indisputably world-class. How insane though, (though sadly unsurprising) that at Apple, marketing trumps security!? 🤯😭 https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  So it seems fairly obvious that ripping out memory-unsafe parsing code and disabling advanced (non plain-text) features — while not guaranteed to solve the problem — is still an open problem, something that Apple can devote its enormous resources to. 6/

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  Another area that Apple has already stepped up their game is in logging. Apple power monitoring telemetry records information about weird process “hang” events, which can sometimes trip up exploits. There's a privacy tradeoff here, but Apple should lean into this. 7/

• @reedalbergotti Reed Albergotti on x

  For starters, no internet-connected device is safe from hacking, so the iPhone is no different in that way. But it has a reputation for excellent security, thanks to Apple's excellent marketing. But Apple's marketing also sometimes gets in the way of security.

• @zackwhittaker Zack Whittaker on x

  This @matthew_d_green blog is a really solid read, since absolute security is a fallacy. “The problem that companies like Apple need to solve is not preventing exploits forever, but a much simpler one: they need to screw up the economics of NSO-style mass exploitation.” https://t…

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  While we can't have “perfect security”, closing down avenues for interactionless targeted infection sure seems like a thing we can make some progress on. 3/

• @gruber John Gruber on x

  @ReedAlbergotti That's like saying the iPhone has a reputation for having the industry's fastest chips “thanks to Apple's excellent marketing”.

• @dcuthbert Daniel Cuthbert on x

  @k8em0 I'd go further and say not just iMessage but WebKit and anything that parses and handles the utter mess that is the internet. This is one hell of a task

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  There is a take that companies like Apple are never going to be able to stop well-resourced attackers like NSO from launching targeted attacks. At the extremes this take is probably correct. But adopting cynicism as strategy is a bad approach. 1/ https://twitter.com/...

• @gf_256 Cts on x

  feel like apple is going to freak out over the bad PR and just dump more money into mitigations -.-""

• @dogemocenigo @dogemocenigo on x

  @matthew_d_green TBH no one in our business believes in “perfect” security. You know very well that it is a cat-and-mouse game.

• @k8em0 Katie Moussouris on x

  “Apple will have to re-write most of the iMessage codebase in some memory-safe language, along w many system libraries that handle parsing. They'll also need to widely deploy ARM mitigations like PAC & MTE in order to make exploitation harder.” https://twitter.com/...

• @gf_256 Cts on x

  this whole NSO thing is going to make my job so much more difficult. damn it

• @elcomsoft @elcomsoft on x

  Probably the best article on that topic https://twitter.com/...

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  Also: I think people need to appreciate the *difference* between “100 high value targets” and “10,000 targets, including random journalists”. There is a big difference from society's point of view... 11/

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  Right now a couple of non-US journalists I talk to have told me all their sources are clamming up. They're afraid that reporters' phones are tapped with Pegasus. I'm sure the scum who launched these attacks are thrilled with this. 12/

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  While we may never stop targeted attacks, making them expensive enough *to prevent them from being credibly mass-deployed against journalists* is a huge benefit to society. It represents a qualitative improvement. 13/

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  And in fact we've seen Apple make some progress on this in the past. Starting recently, Apple added a “firewall” called Blastdoor to iMessage. This is supposed to prevent attacks like Pegasus. Obviously it doesn't work, but it at least ups the cost of these exploits. 4/

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  The reason Apple added a firewall is because they obviously *don't* feel that iMessage is secure by itself. There's too much unsafe parsing code. Adding a firewall is basically an admission that the core product can't be secured in its current form. 5/

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  First, look at how Pegasus and other targeted exploits get onto your phone. Most approaches require some user interaction: a compromised website or a phishing link that users have to click. iMessage, on the other hand, is an avenue for 0-click targeted infection. 2/

• @shashj Shashank Joshi on x

  NSO Group's approach to identifying misuse of its software appears to consist of asking customers nicely whether they used Pegasus to aid in the chopping up of dissidents or not. https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @rajrishisinghal Rajrishi Singhal on x

  This long story suggests #Israel sold #PegasusSpyware like weapon sales, to improve ties with other nations. But @MehulAtLarge seems to be missing a crucial point: armament buyers in the past have rarely used such hardware against their own citizens! https://www.ft.com/...

• @tonytassell Tony Tassell on x

  How Israel used NSO spyware as diplomatic calling card - “It's like the toy that every intelligence officer wants,” said a person involved in pitching NSO products in the Gulf. Rpt by @MehulAtLarge https://www.ft.com/...

• @benabyad Ben White on x

  NSO has confirmed “the Israeli gov't itself uses NSO's technology” Its lawyers argued that revealing list of clients “will meaningfully harm foreign relations of the state” “Many of its staff are from elite military intelligence units.” #PegasusProject https://www.ft.com/...

• @sub8u Subrahmanyam Kvj on x

  Diplomatic weapons of the future are here! “NSO's Pegasus software, which requires a government licence for export because it is considered a weapon, has in recent years become a crucial part of Israel's diplomatic outreach...” https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @arashmassoudi Arash Massoudi on x

  “The Israeli public does not fully understand what is going inside high tech — the holy cow of the economy — and because the Israeli public is not really concerned, there is no public pressure on the government to change anything.” https://www.ft.com/... via @MehulAtLarge

• @kabirtaneja Kabir Taneja on x

  Good piece by @MehulAtLarge on the very thin lines between commercial security and defence companies and the foreign policy interests of the state in Israel. https://www.ft.com/...

• @karmel80 Karen Melchior on x

  Israel has for years ignored calls by a UN Rapporteur on the Freedom of Expression, and others, to place a moratorium on the sales of spyware and to regulate it more closely. https://giftarticle.ft.com/...

• @johnreedwrites @johnreedwrites on x

  A solid and on-point analysis by the @FT's @MehulAtLarge about NSO's spyware and the relationship between the company and the Israeli state. https://giftarticle.ft.com/...

• @aaschapiro Avi Asher-Schapiro on x

  “NSO has hired big name western advisers, including Tom Ridge, the former secretary of homeland security, and briefly, Juliette Kayyem, an assistant secretary...Its current PR offensive is being led by the ex-chief censor of the Israeli military.” https://www.ft.com/...

• @zackwhittaker Zack Whittaker on x

  NSO issued a statement today, saying two things: 1) Pegasus wasn't involved in Jamal Khashoggi's murder, and 2) it doesn't have visibility into what customers do or who they target with Pegasus. These two statement seem to be in conflict. Statement here: https://www.nsogroup.com/…

• @silvermanjacob Jacob Silverman on x

  not sure what to make of this interview with the NSO Group CEO https://www.calcalistech.com/ ...

• @florianflade Florian Flade on x

  „Hulio claimed that over the past 11 years, the company sold its services to 45 countries, and rejected some 90 countries that offered to pay for the software it sells" - If this is true, then at least 135 countries wanted to buy #Pegasus 👁 | #NSO https://www.timesofisrael.com/ .…

• @calcalistech @calcalistech on x

  NSO CEO exclusively responds to allegations: “The list of 50,000 phone numbers has nothing to do with us.” “I'll give you a simple statement: Journalists, human rights activists, and civil organizations are all off-limits.” - Shalev Hulio. #PegasusProject https://www.calcalistech…

• @spencerdailey Spencer Dailey on x

  @Techmeme 3/bonus) Regarding the “list”: Amnesty said 34 iPhones were forensically checked. 23 successfully had malware (specifically Pegasus) installed on them. the other 11 saw attempts at malware infection. That's a 100% hit rate on their sampling of the “list”. https://www.wa…

• @kimzetter Kim Zetter on x

  Hmm. NSO CEO says he heard about list of phone #s last month. “an information broker...said that there is a list circulating in the market and that whoever holds it is saying that the NSO servers in Cyprus were hacked... We don't have servers in Cyprus” https://www.calcalistech.c…

• @spencerdailey Spencer Dailey on x

  @Techmeme 1/2) his claim that the list has “nothing” to do with us is almost certainly false. There is near certainty that there is overlap with people on that list and people that got Pegasus spyware. What does seem probable is that the list is not completely overlapping with NS…

• @scottmstedman Scott Stedman on x

  “It will always be my word against the evidence” -NSO Group CEO. Well said. The evidence will always win. https://www.calcalistech.com/ ...

• @ahmetasabanci @ahmetasabanci on x

  Fully agree with @Snowden on this one. No “better vetting” or “deeper investigation”, just a total ban on all kinds of spyware and companies making it. And put all those people working at NSO on trial for the crimes committed with their tools. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @snowden Edward Snowden on x

  NSO's claim that it is “technologically impossible” to spy on American phone numbers is a bald-faced lie: a exploit that works against Macron's iPhone will work the same on Biden's iPhone. Any code written to prohibit targeting a country can also be unwritten. It's a fig leaf. ht…