Confused? Good! It has been going on for a little while, but Al Jazeera heads the setting of others with ‘Is the US crackdown on spyware firms just getting started?’, the article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/22/is-the-us-crackdown-on-spyware-firms-just-getting-started) gives us “The Biden administration blacklisted Israeli spyware firm NSO in November, but experts say more needs to be done.” Well, that might b e nice, yet the absence of evidence means that they take to the streets with the stupid and flammable people. It becomes even worse with “a collaboration by Amnesty International and a coalition of media outlets – revealed that NSO’s software was sold to authoritarian governments that used it to spy on political leaders, journalists, executives and human rights activists, including people close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” As I personally see it, it was a collection of wannabe’s and fakes. They are that because evidence was not ever presented. And now the plot thickens, you think it does not? Well hold on, we are about to really up the throttle on this.
You see Bloomberg hands over the evidence I claimed all along. I wrote in several articles that if that list of 10,000 numbers was real the NSO Group would have a $400,000,000 piggy bank. But Bloomberg gives us ‘Pegasus Spyware Maker NSO Group Throws Cash at New Ventures to Survive’, where we are treated to “Israeli spyware firm NSO Group burned through most of its cash this year in a desperate bid to move past the scandal surrounding its phone-hacking tool Pegasus, according to a person with knowledge of the matter and private financial documents seen by Bloomberg News”, this could be seen as implied evidence that the money was never there, as such the list has to be (to a larger) part fake. Something I saw in less than 5 minutes, but all these wannabe essay writers You know, the one the Guardian has in Washington DC, as well as a wannabe essay writer at the United Nations with an outspoken hatred of Saudi Arabia. All going on flames and friends, but not a lot of evidence. Last Week at Wired we also get ‘Google Warns That NSO Hacking Is On Par With Elite Nation-State Spies’, but I will get back to that. You see the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-21/nso-group-burned-up-most-of-its-cash-to-shift-away-from-pegasus) also gives us “Two American funds have expressed interest in NSO’s Eclipse technology — which can detect, commandeer and land drones — and in its new big-data analytics platform, for which the company signed its first contract this quarter, the person said. Pegasus would either be shut down or brought under the same umbrella as the other businesses in a bet that U.S. ownership would improve its standing, according to the same person.” In this I personally think that these American Funds can go and get fucked (apologies for the language), you see if the NSO is on a blacklist, the Americans can go try and make it run on a kite.
Although, there is every chance that China, Russia and optionally Saudi Arabia might want these technologies. So as we consider Wired giving us “The exploit mounts a zero-click, or interaction-less, attack, meaning that victims don’t need to click a link or grant a permission for the hack to move forward. Project Zero found that ForcedEntry used a series of shrewd tactics to target Apple’s iMessage platform, bypass protections the company added in recent years to make such attacks more difficult, and adroitly take over devices to install NSO’s flagship spyware implant Pegasus.” You see what Google (Apple too) isn’t telling you is that the transgression was possible to begin with. This is not some nerd in his mothers basement. This is the kind of person that can equal if not surpass both the NSA and GCHQ. More importantly both Google and Apple were not prepared, so just how many gaps are there in mobile phones? You want to complain about Huawei and their security dangers? Google and Apple are doing that all by themselves, just like Cisco did, but you probably missed those articles. Credit to Cisco of alerting everyone to this, but the media was eager to ignore it, much sexier to accuse Huawei without evidence.
So whilst the White House idiot gave the people a blacklisting, we get: “NSO issued a statement at the time saying it was “dismayed” by the Biden administration’s decision and that its technologies “support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime”” So now the parts are here, we get to my use of ‘White House Idiot’, fair enough! You see, as the finances show that members of the media have been lying (optionally by not vetting information). We also see that the members of the NSO Group might sell to anyone BUT the Americans. A stage that will cost America greatly, especially if China acquires this technology. So after they squandered weapons sales to Saudi Arabia (I am still hoping for my 3.75% bonus on sales to China), the setting is now that one of the most sophisticated pieces of intrusion software might end up where no one wanted it to go, it reminds me of the old saying regarding ‘A cornered cat’, and it serves the mother goose brigade as I personally see it and you can see it too, you merely need to look at the actual claims and the fact that we see words like ‘alleged’, we see ‘might be infected’ and we see no clear number system. No dashboard that gives optional validity to the claims by wannabe essay writers.
You know what? I am slightly too angry. First the yanks go all out on Huawei whilst evidence was never presented, now we see that the 5G networks are AT BEST a mere 50% of what Saudi Arabia has and in case of the US it is a mere 1.4% of 1%, it is THAT slow. Now we see the same exercise and it will be anyones guess who ends up with the NSO group software. It will be up to the NSO group to decide, yet I feel strongly that it should never end up in American hands. A person should not be allowed to be THIS stupid and being given a slice of cake, if it does happen, it better be valued at several billions. If you are THIS stupid, you cannot be much of a software maker, so pay you will, optionally Google could buy it to make their hardware more secure. It is a stretch and it is a steep price, but it could mean that the Apple supremacy ends and that might be worth a bag of coins to Google.
Yet the best moment was when I saw that the media nailed their own coffin (the finance bit), so whilst Wired and the Washington Post did the right thing, the others can take a long walk of a short pier as far as I see it. Oh yes, the Wired article was at https://www.wired.com/story/nso-group-forcedentry-pegasus-spyware-analysis/
One day until Christmas, I reckon it is that time of the year when we take a little more time to see what weapon systems are out for sale. I need a new hobby!
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 