Armchair Dragoons Forums
The Reference Desk => References & Research => Topic started by: mcguire on July 21, 2021, 03:26:49 PM
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...here's some of the stank you get to wallow around in.
The NSO Group was founded by a couple former members of Israeli signals intelligence and produces the Pegasus software which it provides to governments. (And may operate for those governments. Sometimes the line between arms dealer and mercenary is fuzzy.) Pegasus is software that can be installed on mobile phones (How does the phrase "three zero-day vulnerabilities in iOS" strike you?) and allows keystroke logging and phone and location tracking (and reputedly remote access to the microphone and camera)---it's spyware. In 2019 they were sued by WhatsApp and Facebook for using WhatsApp to infect something like 1800 phones in violation of its terms of service. (When you're being sued by Facebook for being evil...? :doh:)
Recently, 50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets was leaked, including journalist, government-opposition politicians, activists, and so on.
NSO Group says enough is enough, will no longer respond to media inquiries (https://www.nsogroup.com/Newses/enough-is-enough/); apparently Forbidden Stories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Stories) is out to get them.
On the one hand, Arab-Israeli cooperation! Yay! (NSO's clients include Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Hungary, India, Rwanda, and Togo. (Togo?)) On the other, :sick:.