This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Israeli company legally allowed to produce and sell digital spycraft, only to verified western nations, has clients of dodgy and murderous origin. News at 11.
I wonder if Jamal Khashoggi would still have been brutally hacksawed into individual bits in an embassy if not for Pegasus.
Call me crazy but I have my doubts.
Jamal Khashoggi didn't have Pegasus on his phone though? and his wife didn't have it until after the murder. The assassination was an old school plot to lure him to a location where the Saudi team had diplomatic immunity I thought.
Thanks for the info. I supposed Pegasus was used as well. Still simply cannot believe something that brutish and evil went completely unpunished. Shameful.
Yeah but the guy behind it is richer than God. That counts for something, right?
It was a horrific situation and yes he is but as the commenter above was right that they have (or had maybe) diplomatic immunity. I'm not sure how all-encompassing diplomatic immunity is but I know it wasn't an issue when a guard with diplomatic immunity punched a reporter directly outside the White House during a White House press conference a few years back (iirc). They just revoked the diplomatic immunity status of that specific guard or guards.
When countries try to keep peace and nukes exist, sometimes things get messy and go without consequence, very unfortunate. I forget what else there is about the Saudi-America exchange, I'm not an expert in diplomatic affairs by any means, but I think any retaliation could lead to $20 gallons of gas and I think they might also own a significantly large percentage of our GDP debt. Do not quote me or take that as fact because I may very well be mixing up countries and information.
As long as Mohammad bin Salman is alive, the possibility of his punishment exists.
It’s extremely low probability still, but he hasn’t escaped punishment entirely yet and won’t until he’s dead.
He still got hacked nonetheless 🤷
To bits
While I appreciate the correction, I'm not sure it changes much when they hacked and spied on those closest to him to find out the information they needed, rather than hacking him directly. I wonder if they couldn't hack him, did and wiped the infection once he showed up to the embassy, or if he was just that careful and constantly changed or didn't use smartphones or give his number out.
It's like your crazy paranoid neighbor who heard you talking shit about him once doesn't want to directly hack your Ring cam so they know when you're coming and going everyday, instead they just hack the rest of the neighbors so they know when you're coming and going everyday. Is there a meaningful difference?
I'm guessing he booked the appointment at the embassy though, so it's not really about the technology used, as that information could have been used to trap and kill him for as long as embassies have been about?
Out of curiosity I asked ChatGPT for more background. This is the result.
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist and critic of the Saudi government, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018. He had gone there to obtain documents related to his upcoming marriage. However, once inside the consulate, he was brutally murdered by a team of Saudi agents.
The details of how he was lured vary, but it is believed that Saudi officials, including the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were involved in orchestrating his murder. Khashoggi's murder sparked international outrage and led to a significant diplomatic crisis.
Consequences for the murder have been complex. Some individuals directly involved in the killing were put on trial in Saudi Arabia, and several were convicted, though the trials lacked transparency and were widely criticized. Internationally, there were sanctions and travel bans imposed on Saudi officials, but the extent of the consequences remained a subject of debate. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination, but he has denied any involvement.
The Khashoggi case has had lasting implications for Saudi Arabia's international reputation and its relationship with other countries, particularly the United States. It has raised questions about human rights, press freedom, and the role of the Saudi government in suppressing dissent.
neighbors’
THank you; i appreciated this.
Thank I noproblem
We should be sanctioning Isreal for fostering an environment where this happens. This is not ok.
Advertising is malware.
I caught the COVID from the Yellow Pages! It's a Communist plot!
Yet more evidence that aggressive adblocking is cyber security.
"Stop making the data collection profitable, and this goes away. If behavioral advertising were banned, the industry wouldn't exist."
I’m holding my breath.
If cocaine were banned the industry wouldn’t exist
That feels like a pretty big false equivalency. There's a huge consumer demand for cocaine, that's the whole reason cartels exist.
No consumer wants behavior driven marketing, it's forced on them for the benefit of companies. If ads were outlawed right now, I doubt you'd find any communities online trying to get bootleg ads working on their machine lol
"If you're not willing to spread your computer's asscheeks to let Israeli spyware into your home, you're a pirate and I hate you." - Linus Sebastian (probably)
"I'm sorry for the Israeli spyware comment I made earlier. It was insensitive, but they offered me $200 for it, what was I supposed to do? It was the right move and I stand by it."
As usual, excellent stock photo enhancing the story here.
Is it necessary to click on the ad? Or is it enough to go to the web page where the ad is displayed?
I think the implication is zero-click exploit.
But if that's the case it should be fairly simple to reverse engineer whichever exploit they're using.
Adblocker, VPN /wireguard, Firewall and my little brother knows Linux! Ha! I'm safe!
I love Linux, but don't assume you aren't vulnerable to malware because you use it. There's plenty of Linux malware these days, since so many servers run Linux.
Not to mention a VPN does absolutely fuck all to protect you from malware.
It's an interesting twist. Sherlock seems designed to use legal data collection and digital advertising technologies — beloved by Big Tech and online media — to target people for government-level espionage. Other spyware, such as NSO Group's Pegasus or Cytrox's Predator and Alien, tends to be more precisely targeted.
So . . . It’s just “digital customer engagement” and all the other euphemisms for online stalking, it’s just that the intent is pre-stated to be nefarious. Hm.
