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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31264 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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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

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