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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

As other have commented, this is absolutely mind-bogglingly hard core. Kudos to the NSO group engineers who designed and built this (regardless of your allegiances and whether you like or dislike that they do this and whether it's objectively good or evil or somewhere in between, you have to admit that it's deeply technically impressive).

Does anyone have a sense of who they sold this to and who used this particular 0-click exploit?

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My country’s dictator (Viktor Orban) uses it to spy against the opposition and the president to make sure that he keeps control of Hungary. I would give more kudos to NSO if they helped us get rid of corruption in my country.

Sorry but can't agree here - this stuff is proper evil for most of world population, which includes also most of HN readers (no its not just SV and 5 other guys). Its more often than not used to oppress common citizens, freedom thinkers and truth sayers.

They are actively making this world a much worse place long term, and why - pure greed for money and power. They don't even try to act like there is some moral / law filter when choosing their customers.

NSO as company is a highly amoral business too, kind of goes hand in hand.

I don't think any of what you said refutes the point that this is deeply technically impressive.

It does to me, but then I have my own moral values.

How nazis organized jewish extermination of millions in concentration camps might be also amazing from bureaucratic & organizational point of view, yet I completely fail to marvel at such an achievement in efficiency.

> regardless of your allegiances and whether you like or dislike that they do this and whether it's objectively good or evil or somewhere in between, you have to admit that it's deeply technically impressiv

Might as well praise German logistics circa 1940-1945.

"Say what you will about those Fascists, at least they made the trains run on time!"

(Note on the above off-repeated cliche: they did not, in fact, make the trains run on time.)

German logistics that circa was actually pretty inefficient, big part why they failed to beat the opponents.

I admire its purity.

> Does anyone have a sense of who they sold this to and who used this particular 0-click exploit?

From the article:

> Earlier this year, Citizen Lab managed to capture an NSO iMessage-based zero-click exploit being used to target a Saudi activist.

The Indian government used it to spy on opposition politicians

https://theprint.in/opinion/only-15-indians-know-about-pegas...

I remember reading this. Are you aware of a detailed account? Regardless of Indian politics, has it actually been proven/researched?

> has it actually been proven/researched?

Yes.

"The Wire has confirmed the numbers of at least 40 journalists who were either targets or potential targets for surveillance. Forensic analysis was conducted on the phones of seven journalists, of which five showed traces of a successful infection by Pegasus." https://thewire.in/rights/project-pegasus-list-of-names-unco...

The forensic analysis was conducted by Amnesty International's Security Lab and was peer-reviewed by Citizen Lab 1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-... 2. https://citizenlab.ca/2021/07/amnesty-peer-review/

Also, "In the midst of the heated West Bengal assembly election, the phone of poll strategist Prashant Kishor was broken into using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to digital forensics conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab and shared with The Wire." https://thewire.in/government/prashant-kishor-mamata-banerje...

Govt of India in parliament on NSO group (Dec 3, 2012): "There is no proposal for banning any group named NSO group" https://twitter.com/A2D2_/status/1466700684573642752

Thank you. I had previously re as the citizenlab report, but didn’t realise that Indians were targeted as well.

I'm assuming NSO just buys these exploits and then packages them.

Some subset of their expansive customer list.

This isn't a one-time thing. They're a funnel.

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