[HN Gopher] Pegasus: A Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of P...
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       Pegasus: A Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy
        
       Author : galaxyLogic
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2023-01-17 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tatteredcover.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tatteredcover.com)
        
       | johnea wrote:
       | Pegasus might make handy click bait, but NSO Group doesn't get a
       | tiny fraction of the data that Goggle Corp gathers.
       | 
       | But, since pretty much everyone in the US is allowing goggle to
       | continue it's massive violation of the 4th amendment, it's not
       | really news worthy.
        
         | czx4f4bd wrote:
         | Google isn't a branch of the US government, so the 4th
         | amendment doesn't apply. If you want adtech surveillance to be
         | regulated, lobby for GDPR-style regulation in the US.
        
           | cheeseomlit wrote:
           | If the US Gov has access to the data Google collects without
           | issuing a warrant, which they do according to the Snowden
           | leaks, then the distinction is meaningless as far as the
           | intent of the 4th amendment goes
        
             | orthecreedence wrote:
             | Yes, the separation of state and industry has long been
             | eroded in the US. Yet people are still under the illusion
             | that democracy exists.
        
             | czx4f4bd wrote:
             | The US government obtained that data by illegally tapping
             | into Google's data centers, which means the government was
             | still the entity violating the 4th amendment.
             | 
             | If you want to criticize Google's data collection, fine,
             | but doing it in terms of the 4th amendment is just
             | nonsensical. If you want to criticize companies for
             | collecting data that could subsequently be illegally
             | collected by the government, then every single company that
             | collects any PII/private information could be criticized on
             | the same basis.
        
               | cheeseomlit wrote:
               | It's not like they hacked into Google's servers without
               | their knowledge or consent, they were given access to the
               | data. Obviously those who knew about it at Google were
               | under gag orders, but one would hope that somebody
               | involved would have the balls to leak the government's
               | blatantly unconstitutional and illegal demands to the
               | press regardless. Those gag orders wouldn't have held up
               | in court if anybody at one of the PRISM companies had the
               | conscience to go rogue. Every company involved in PRISM
               | can be rightfully accused of colluding with the
               | government to violate the basic 4th amendment rights of
               | millions of people, knowingly and willingly.
        
               | roywiggins wrote:
               | I didn't get the impression that MUSCULAR (intercepting
               | Google's inter-datacenter links, distinct from PRISM)
               | involved Google's cooperation.
        
               | EMM_386 wrote:
               | > It's not like they hacked into Google's servers without
               | their knowledge or consent, they were given access to the
               | data.
               | 
               | This is not true. The NSA hacked Google without their
               | consent.
               | 
               | The relevant slide from the Snowden leak is here:
               | 
               | https://i.imgur.com/7IHE6sG.png
               | 
               | > Snowden leaks: Google 'outraged' at alleged NSA hacking
               | 
               | https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24751821
        
             | webdoodle wrote:
             | There's a word for that: FASCISM, and both parties enabled
             | it:
             | 
             | -Bush Jr. set up the surveillance system using a classified
             | executive order
             | 
             | -Obama gave access to it to 16 Law Enforcement agencies
             | (via EO) and didn't renew the Smith-Mundt Act to legalize
             | psychological warfare on U.S. Citizens
             | 
             | -Trump could have shut it down by the same Executive Order
             | system , but instead did nothing but whine and remove a
             | single Top Security clearance from Brennan. He also ordered
             | the DHS to create lists of journalists and media
             | influencers to target for surveillance.
             | 
             | -Biden weaponized social media against us to silence us and
             | ostracize us from society.
        
               | drooopy wrote:
               | -Biden weaponized social media against us to silence us
               | and ostracize us from society.
               | 
               | Huh?
        
         | vuln wrote:
         | Users typically agree to send their data to Google.
         | 
         | With NSO and Pegasus the purchaser agrees, but the intended
         | victim (the one being exploited) never agreed to send their
         | data to whomever purchased Pegasus from NSO or the NSO.
         | 
         | So it doesn't really matter if NSO has less data than Google.
         | It matters _HOW_ the NSO Group/ customer got the data which
         | 99.9% is against the wishes of the victim.
        
       | etc-hosts wrote:
       | > If they've found a way to hack one iPhone," says Edward
       | Snowden, "they've found a way to hack all iPhones."
       | 
       | I thought the way this works is that NSO Group determines there's
       | a vulnerability in ios or android that lets them insert Pegasus,
       | but soon after it gets deployed to spy on 1 person by a NSO Group
       | client, Apple and Google eventually detects it and patches the
       | vulnerability.
       | 
       | I don't think it scales to 'all iphones'.
       | 
       | There is a recent Frontline episode where NSO Group denies any
       | knowledge of how Pegasus gets deployed once they sell the exploit
       | system to a client, but that seems false to me since it is my
       | understanding NSO Group runs a large amount of infrastructure to
       | collect data from infected phones and to report data to the
       | client, a multi tenant system.
       | 
       | I can't find a source for Snowden saying this either.
        
         | gtvwill wrote:
         | Oh such innocence. Apples probably backdoored permanently and
         | so is android. Churrs aus gov law that means they can force you
         | the employee to implement a backdoor and your not even allowed
         | to tell your boss. Remember if the products sold in aus or has
         | any form of business HQ here it has to be assumed it is not
         | free from gov eyes.
         | 
         | Also thanks to 5 eyes knowledge sharing your gov in US and my
         | gov here don't need warrants to spy on their own citizens. They
         | just have your data pass through a foreign but 5 eyes hosted
         | service in one of their partner nations and pass data back via
         | intel sharing agreements.
         | 
         | The only safe assumption is all your devices are compromised or
         | can easily be.
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | "Any" would be more apt than "all", although they may be able
         | to do a coordinated blast targeting every phone at once. Not
         | very stealthy though.
        
         | crystaln wrote:
         | Also, if a phone is in an attacker's custody, it will no longer
         | be updated, and they can wait for an exploit to no longer be
         | day one when it will be cheaper.
        
         | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
         | I wormable vulnerability would do well, my iPhone seems to want
         | to patch only a few days after release.
        
         | dayre wrote:
         | Agreed, basically all phones having exploits that NSO has
         | discovered and have yet to be patched by the owner of the phone
         | are vulnerable. I think Apple's lawsuit against NSO is still in
         | the courts, they mention a specific exploit that has since been
         | patched.
         | 
         | https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2021/11/apple-sues-nso-gro...
        
       | moltude wrote:
       | Interview with the authors on the Lawfare podcast
       | 
       | https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-how-spy-your-poc...
        
       | DerekBickerton wrote:
       | I'm probably reading this HN thread from a Pegasus-infected
       | iPhone right now, and I have no way of knowing! The only
       | commercial solution to detect Pegasus I know of is iMazing's
       | Pegasus detection tool[0] which borrows techniques from Amnesty
       | International's Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT)[1] to detect
       | Pegasus. Not sure how reliable it is though.
       | 
       | Anyway with something like Pegasus, all the forensic artifacts
       | would be random and heavily mutated for each infected device, so
       | it's not as easy as running a tool to detect its presence.
       | Pegasus is known for doing anti-forensics under the hood.
       | 
       | [0] https://imazing.com/blog/detecting-pegasus-spyware-with-
       | imaz...
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
        
       | keyme wrote:
       | The smartphone: A Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy
       | 
       | Pegasus was just a way of some governments to get their hands on
       | a small part of the action GOOG & FB are swimming in.
        
       | raybb wrote:
       | PBS Frontline released a documentary about Pegasus earlier this
       | month and it's pretty good, though a bit slow.
       | 
       | https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/global-spywar...
        
       | zeitgeistcowboy wrote:
       | It was cool to see the listing of this book at The Tattered Cover
       | Bookstore website. This is an old school bookstore and well worth
       | a visit. It looks like there are eight locations around Colorado.
       | I grew up going to the one in Colorado Springs on Tejon street in
       | the 90s. It goes to show that used bookstores offer a great
       | service for very modern topics like digital privacy.
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-17 23:01 UTC)