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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31265 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Random rumors from the internet:

https://twitter.com/realpepeescobar/status/1711973752924455254

Mossad is now blaming Huawei.

Hamas used Huawei smartphones with no Western backdoor.

That completes switching the blame to the new "axis of evil".

Russia-China-Iran.

The source is a twitter account named @RealPepeEscobar, so do your due diligence, but if this is true it's absolutely hilarious: Western intelligence agencies spend their time and money breaking into their own side's hardware rather than that of the enemy...

One of the replies to the tweet says he'll go and buy a Huawei now, and to be honest who can blame him, just like how having western rather than Chinese backdoors in your hardware protects you if you're living in China, having Chinese rather than western backdoors protects you if you're living in the west.

Even if you live in the west, China may use informations about you. Do you work for the army? Do you work for a competitor of a chinese company? Do you hold anti chinese views? Are you an obstacle on the way of a chinese agent?

I understand that you don't trust your government, but trusting a foreign government more is something weird...

Globalists gonna globalize.

Oh, I don't trust the foreign governments at all. It's more that the foreign government has less power to hurt me than the local government.

I don't think so. I agree that the local government has mire physical power, but its incentives are quite different. The US government has to let americans believe that it acts in their interests. China does not care as much

Pepe Escobar is quite possibly the least credible source on planet earth...

It seems very unlikely. The release of various Pegasus/NSO Group stuff shows that they very much weren’t exploiting deliberate back doors (which would have made things much easier) but obscure vulnerabilities in iMessage etc. I find it hard to believe that Huawei phones running on Android or their own weird HarmonyOS (which is cobbled together out of a lot of different things, including a fork of Android 10, and which is pretty new anyway) are more impenetrable than latest model iPhones. All the extensive evidence points to the reverse being true.

If there are backdoors in Apple and Android phones, wouldn't they be ordered by the government and not be shared outside of intelligence agencies?

NSO, OTOH, appears to have developed remote hacking tech and is selling it far and wide, by contrast.

I see NSO as more of a play so that police departments and other minor state security services can try to phone hack too.

This is all assuming NSO isn't a cute little Mossad front, of course.

They are not. But usually in this world all interesting targets use iphone. And because android could be rooted it could be made more secure.

Random nitpick. It may make sense to root a device to strip away tracking or privacy impacting features. Though some way argue that your attempt to do so itself may be fingerprintable.

For security... doubt it'd do much. If your device maker is releasing poorly secured software why would the hardware/firmware be any better.

Though some way argue that your attempt to do so itself may be fingerprintable.

This is always the rub.

There is a world of difference between evading detection and evading attention, and depending on the circumstances attempts to evade one will often draw the other. As is often the case, there is a relevant XKCD

iptables. Those things usually require multi stage install. You highjack something then make request for the exploits, then download the big one. If you only allow minimal processes to have internet connection you may foil the installation itself. Also andoid doesn't have such idiocy as imessage.

Sorry, are you saying you set up iptables rules on your android phone to lock it down in case of malware/spyware/hacking?

Kinda. I just implement very strict firewall. And I suppose that unless the malware is modifying by default - and there is limitation how much logic can you implement in shellcode

I've long said in a haha only serious fashion that the reason American intelligence says that Huawei phones are a security threat isn't because China is spying on you, it's because Huawei prevents Americans from spying on you. Of course, both things can be true, but if you're an American that doesn't have sensitive information of value to China, there's probably more value in securing your phone from the American government than the Chinese government.

This is probably the main reason for the anti Huawei backlash. The NSA has a more difficult time snooping when they can't install backdoors. It will also be one of Huawei's main selling points. Buy Huawei and reduce the risk of NSA spying.

If you use any Western apps (from browsers to social media to online banking to games to literally anything else) then you’re surely compromised regardless.

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