NEW: Ex exec at premier private cyber weapons contractor to US accused of selling eight trade secrets to buyer in Russia.

I think this = exploits.

Very bad: at minimum would give adversaries a blueprint for detecting the tip of the spear of US/Allied cyber ops..

Wild story 1/
2/ A watch collection studded with fake rolexes...

...is allegedly part of Peter "doogie" Williams haul from selling the hacking labs' secrets.

documentcloud.org/documents/2619…

WARNING: seeing a lot of phishing against @Signal users.

Did you get a message like this?

Don't engage! It's an attempt to steal your account.

Your account is safe & chats are private, but you should use Signal's option to Report Spam & Block. 1/ 2/ You can make the attackers life harder by clicking Report.

Background: Like any popular secure messaging app, Signal users sometimes get targeted by spam & phishing attempts.

Often, attackers guess large numbers of usernames / phone numbers & send out message requests...

A "damaging" leak of tools from a five eyes exploit developer?

Concerning. We need to know what's under this rug.

Big picture: "trusted, vetted" private sector players offensive cyber are not immune to losing control of tooling... with national security consequences 1/

https://x.com/jsrailton/status/1980656292378370509

2/ If true, a tooling leak at boutique firm Trenchant wouldn't be the first time that exploits from commercial offensive vendors wind up... in the wrong place.

Many questions.

In the meantime. Remember when Russian APT29..was caught with exploits first used by NSO & Intellexa?

NOW: US court permanently bans Pegasus spyware maker from hacking WhatsApp.

NSO Group can't help their customers hack @WhatsApp, etc ether. Must delete exploits...

Bad news for NSO. Huge competitive disadvantage for the notorious company.

Big additional win for WhatsApp 1 /


2/ Although the massive punitive damages jury award against NSO Group ($167m) got reduced by the court, as is expected in cases where it is so large (to 9x compensatory damages)...

This is likely cold comfort to NSO since I think the injunction is going to have a huge impact on the value of NSO's spyware product.

Comes as NSO Group has been making noises about getting acquired by a US investor & some unnamed backers...

WOW: @Apple donating a thousand new #iPhone17 s to civil society at-risk from mercenary spyware.

Good. This will help get Apple's most secure devices to where they need to be..

Truth is: those at the greatest risk from spyware are often least able to afford more secure phones 1/ 2/ Memory Integrity Enforcement = big deal Radically hardens iPhones from common attack vectors.

So it was a bittersweet to see this announcement and think "yeah it's going to be a long time before highest risk ppl can get them."..

https://x.com/radian/status/1965480559368699936

NEW: fresh trouble for mercenary spyware companies like NSO Group.

@Apple launching substantial bounties on the zero-click exploits that feed the supply chain behind products like Pegasus & Paragon's Graphite.

With bonuses, exploit developers can hit $5 million payouts. 1/
2/ Apple is introducing Target Flags which speeds the process of getting exploits found & submitters rewarded.

This faster tempo is also a strike against the mercenary spyware ecosystem.

And the expanded categories also hit more widely against commercial surveillance vendors.

NEW: Pegasus spyware coming to America?

An ex-Adam Sandler producer is again trying acquire the notorious NSO Group.

Simonds fronted this before in 2023 & failed. But the backers of this idea haven't given up.

Where is the money coming from?

The unanswered questions should worry every American 1/


2/ Back in 2023 it wasn't clear to me where the money backing Robert Simonds big spyware plans came from.

It still isn't.

So, whose money will actually be buying Pegasus?

And what is the end goal?

Report by @globesnews' @assafgi
globes.co.il/news/article.a…

NEW: foreign mercenary spyware is coming to the US.

ICE just quietly unsuspended contract with spyware maker #Paragon.

Remember them?

Caught earlier this year being used to hack journalists.

Bad move for Americans rights, national security & counterintelligence 1/ 2/ #Paragon was co-founded in Israel in 2019 by ex head of Israel's NSA equivalent (Unit 8200) w/ major backing from former Israeli PM Ehud Barak.

Pitched themselves as stealthy & abuse-proof alternative to NSO Group's Pegasus.

& have been trying to get into the US market for years.

NEW: @WhatsApp caught & fixed a sophisticated zero click attack...

Now they've published an advisory about it.

Say attackers combined the exploit with an @Apple vulnerability to hack a specific group of targets (i.e. this wasn't pointed at everybody)

Quick thoughts 1/ Wait, you say, haven't I heard of @WhatsApp zero-click exploits before?

You have.

A big user base makes a platform big target for exploit development.

Think about it from the attacker's perspective: an exploit against a popular messenger gives you potential access to a lot of devices.

You probably want maximum mileage from that painstakingly developed, weaponized, and tested exploit code you created/ purchased (or got bundled into your Pegasus subscription).

WHOA: megapublisher @axelspringer is asking a German court to ban an ad-blocker.

Their claim that should make everyone nervous:

The HTML/ CSS code of websites are protected computer programs.

And influencing they are displayed (e.g by removing ads) violates copyright.

1/ 2/ Preventing ad-blocking would be a huge blow to German cybersecurity and privacy.

There are critical security & privacy reasons to influence how a websites code gets displayed.

Like stripping out dangerous code & malvertising.

Or blocking unwanted trackers.

This is why most governments do it on their systems.

NEW: Mexico's former president under investigation for taking bribes from spyware industry.

Contracts included #Pegasus deal.

Story from @TheRecord_Media's Suzanne Smalley 1/

2/ Mexico's former president is denying everything...

But folks may recall that Pegasus was massively and systematically abused in Mexico.

Against journalists, spouses of cartel victims, lawyers, families of cartel-disappeared people, anti-corruption groups etc. etc.

There were so many cases that we eventually had EIGHT investigative reports...
therecord.media/former-mexican…

🚨NEW REPORT: exposing a new hacking tactic.

🇷🇺Russian state-backed hackers used an App-Specific Password attack against prominent Russia expert @KeirGiles & others.

It's like they know what we all expect from them...and then did the opposite 1/

By us @citizenlab & @google's GTIG

2/ Let's begin: @KeirGiles gets a message purporting to be from @StateDept asking for a consultation.

The attackers send the message from a @gmail, but CC'd a bunch of email addresses @ state.gov.

Strong credibility signal to have a bunch of gov ppl on the CC line right?

Well, what the attackers were counting on is that the State Dept mailserver just accepts all email addresses without emitting a bounce.

So they seem to have just created some fake State Dept staff names and addresses.

🚨NEW INVESTIGATION: We just forensically unmasked #Paragon's Apple spyware.

Zero-click targets: Journalists. In 🇪🇺Europe.

Like 🇮🇹Italian reporter @ciropellegrino.

Reopen's #Italy's spyware scandal.

Follows our @citizenlab investigation of their Android spyware. 1/ 2/ Back in April, @Apple sent out a threat notification to a select group of users. Some got in touch with us @citizenlab to get analyzed.

They'd been targeted with a sophisticated zero-click attack (think: no click, no attachment to open, no mistake needed...).

NEW: #Italy's spyware scandal just deepened.

Just days ago, #Italy claimed to not know who targeted Journalist @fcancellato with #Paragon spyware.

But now the spyware company is dropping heavy hints that this wasn't the full story👇

https://x.com/omerbenj/status/1931903202275790943

2/ Last week the #Italian government published a report acknowledging that they were responsible for certain #paragon spyware cases.

But left the politically trickiest case unanswered...

https://x.com/jsrailton/status/1930947848646037615

NEW: Italy admits hacking activists with #Paragon spyware.

Blow to the reputation of a mercenary spyware company that marketed itself as an ethically clean anti-NSO.

But the official investigation doesn't answer a big mystery that's bad for #Italy & Paragon 1/..

By @omerbenj 2/ While Italy confirms the activist cases, they deny doing the politically explosive one:

Journalist & @fanpage editor Francesco Cancellato, whose reporting has tangled with the Prime Minister.

So who pointed Paragon against @fcancellato?

None of the answers are good...

NEW: Pegasus spyware maker NSO Group just got publicly rebuffed by the US.

They came to DC to get off the US blacklist.

It did not work out. Thanks to their own actions.

You know about the human rights issues, but let me tell you why NSO is no friend to the United States. 1/ 2/ First, it's important to know that NSO was shady in how they set up the meeting.

For close observers, this is no surprise.

NSO constantly thinks that they can play the United States.

Part of what got them in trouble in the first place, but let's go deeper.

BREAKING: jury awards massive $167 million in punitive damages against spyware company NSO Group.

Precedent-setting win against the notorious #Pegasus spyware maker.

Congratulations to @WhatsApp on sticking this case through since 2019. Some thoughts 1/ 2/ After years of every trick & delay tactic it only took a California jury one days deliberation to the heart of the matter:

NSO makes millions hacking mostly-🇺🇸American tech companies... so that dictators can hack dissidents.

Their conduct deserved to be punished.

Friends don't let friends get their eyeballs scanned to buy a coffee.

Sam Altman's Orwellian "Tools for Humanity" says this dystopia machine could help distinguish between #AI agents & humans... or verify at Point of Sale..or..?

Looks to me like a big biometric data grab 1/ 2/ Surely they didn't just start with the idea of invasively harvesting eyeball scans...and then look around for potential justifications.

And then add in some AI hype.

Right?

Fear is dictatorship glue.

You can't imprison everyone with a dissenting thought.

Or inconvenient factual observation.

But fear teaches self censorship. It's a scalable system of control.

The autocrat's challenge is to keep the fear going. 1/ 2/ In the 20th century, keeping fear alive required massive human investment.

Informants... archives...exemplary punishments... information control.

Looked like a linear scale.

A post-cold war school of thought said: once everyone is connected, these systems won't work.

🚨NEW REPORT: first forensic confirmation of #Paragon mercenary spyware infections in #Italy...

Known targets: Activists & journalists.

We also found deployments around the world. Including ...Canada?

And a lot more... Thread on our @citizenlab investigation 1/
2/ So #Paragon makes zero-click spyware marketed as better than NSO's Pegasus...

Harder to find...

...And more ethical too!

This caught our attention @citizenlab & we were skeptical.

By @iblametom forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…

BREAKING: #Paragon reportedly terminates spyware contract with #Italy.

Right on heels of reported targeting of journalist & activists in Italy.

BIG DEAL: puts Italian government in the hot seat, since they denied knowing about it only hours ago.👇

https://x.com/jsrailton/status/1887255424560472247

2/ Read this slowly.

The implication is clear: the Italian government was a #Paragon customer & had their contract terminated...

Even as @GiorgiaMeloni's office was issuing denials.

Likely to make the scandal worse.

Exceptional reporting from The Guardian
theguardian.com/technology/202…