Alleged Israeli spy company targeted Starlink users(www.reuters.com)
119 pointsby mmaia7 hours ago8 comments
  • augstein5 hours ago
    Increasingly obvious and annoying, even to most normies, that Israel is nowadays the main obstacle not only to lasting peace in the middle east (and various other regions) but also a major menace to anyone valuing their right to (digital) privacy.
    • jameshilliardan hour ago
      > Israel is nowadays the main obstacle not only to lasting peace in the middle east (and various other regions)

      Ironically Israel uses hacking tool sales as a tool for diplomacy[0]. Apparently Pegasus sales played a critical role in the Abraham Accord negotiations. While there are obvious ethical issues here it seems these tools likely actually helped create real peace deals in practice.

      [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-p...

    • tptacek5 hours ago
      Basically every major industrialized country in the world has firms that do stuff like this, and worse.
      • sentientlaserbe5 hours ago
        No, Israel is definitely the world leader in spying. They have a wonderful relationship with the American political class, enabling access to what the US has, and with asymmetry protecting Israelis over Americans, plus their own clandestine spying against influential Americans, and their operations all over the world. Their part among the players doesn't detract from grievances against Israel - it adds to it.
        • tptacek5 hours ago
          There are dozens of firms in NATO countries and especially the US that do this kind of signals intelligence and surveillance work. I see no evidence at all that the US IC uses Israel for any kind of cover; we have native firms enabling sigint at the highest levels. "Cover" only makes sense if you're using it exclusively, but most CNE enablement work in NATO is done by NATO firms.
          • gruez4 hours ago
            >There are dozens of firms in NATO countries and especially the US that do this kind of signals intelligence and surveillance work.

            List them? I asked AI for a list of mercenary hacking firms and it turned up:

            NSO Group (Israel)

            Intellexa Consortium (a bunch of countries including Israel, and the founder is Israeli)

            Candiru (Israel)

            Paragon Solutions (Israel)

            RCS Lab (Italy)

          • alsetmusic5 hours ago
            > "Cover" only makes sense if you're using it exclusively, but most CNE enablement work in NATO is done by NATO firms.

            Cover is behaving horribly out in the open and having half of US politicians run cover for you by demonizing your detractors as anti-Semitic. The US has been shielding them for decades, though not exclusively. That time is waning.

            • jackb40404 hours ago
              > half

              They own the careers of all but a tiny handful of US politicians

          • newspaper15 hours ago
            Israel stands alone in its cyber crime though. I'm not aware of any other country that has committed an act of mass terrorism by blowing up consumer devices.
            • kats3 hours ago
              Mossad director Yossi Cohen said that they have implemented 'manipulated equipment' across "virtually every potential theatre of operation," and “in all the countries that you can imagine".

              https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/2462875/

              • newspaper13 hours ago
                Wow, well that's to be expected but also terrifying. Thank you for pointing this out, I actually just submitted it here as more people should see this.

                Edit: So this hit the front-page almost immediately and has 20 comments but also got instantly flagged. I really wish the mods would put in some kind of protection against flagging Israel stories like this, they're very important.

                • cowlevel3 hours ago
                  There are armies of bots on HN.
        • pcthrowaway5 hours ago
          In terms of number of people spied on to number of people involved in spying, sure. China and U.S. are probably the world leaders in spying; its just a smaller percentage of the economies of both
      • hackersnooze12 hours ago
        >and worse

        Besides maybe the US, not really no

      • Dig1t4 hours ago
        This is always the classic defense whenever Israel is discovered to be doing something nefarious. Used to deflect criticism. Do we have any evidence that other nations are doing this? If we did we did, then that other country would get criticized in the exact same way. They are not being held to a different standard.

        An example would be Cambridge Analytica, they got more bad press for doing similarly evil things and they are not Israeli.

        Yes other countries do things that are similar, like China. But China doesn't have a "special relationship" with the US like Israel does, they aren't our "greatest ally" like Israel is purported to be, and they don't have staff and representatives at the highest levels of the US government like Israel does.

        • tptacek3 hours ago
          I would rather eat a bug than debate Israel vs. NATO on HN (or anywhere else), but these threads about Israeli spyware firms are actively misleading about something HN generally covers (CNE and security). I don't care what you think about Israel. I do care that people genuinely believe that these kinds of things (ad-driven spyware feels like it's on the tame side of what we talk about) are somehow distinctive to Israel.
          • overfeedan hour ago
            Boiled down to its essence, your argument ("Everyone does it") reduces the quality of discussion. Part of it is stripping nuance, and also part whataboutism, and thought-terminating cliché.

            If someone comments that "Qatar produces a high amount of greenhouse gases", a reply that says "Every country on Earth produces some greenhouse gases" is low quality; can we instead talk about CO2 production, compare trends, dig into why Qatar's per capita emissions are so damn high, and what can be done - if anything - to achieve the idealized version of the world with less climate change.

    • myth_drannon5 hours ago
      [flagged]
    • lofaszvanitt4 hours ago
      [flagged]
    • ThrowawayTestr3 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • toomanyrichies3 hours ago
        Criticizing the Israeli government’s policies is not the same thing as saying anything about Jews. Plenty of Jews, in Israel and outside it, make the same criticisms. Treating the two as one thing makes both conversations worse.
  • kats3 hours ago
    Mossad director Yossi Cohen said that they have implemented 'manipulated equipment' across "virtually every potential theatre of operation," and “in all the countries that you can imagine".

    https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/2462875/

  • timedudean hour ago
    Amazing how these stories disappear from HN front page very quickly.
    • slowin32 minutes ago
      Indeed, few things are more appropriate for Hacker News than information about a state constantly hacking people. It's actually dangerous to bury this information so quickly as we are all at risk.
  • purpleflame12576 hours ago
    Weird sentence structure. It makes it sound like the company is accused of being Israeli.
  • proshno16 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • dmix6 hours ago
    > aimed at Starlink users and that it was the No. 1 bidder on Starlink traffic in more than 100 countries, including several where Starlink itself was banned or restricted.

    Some counter espionage program? Maybe spies use Starlink instead of radios these days.

  • everdrive5 hours ago
    Why wouldn't they? We already know that militaries and governments use StarLink. I'll bet dissidents and terrorists use them as well.

    I'm not offering my support of this, but it's just not a surprising state of affairs.