Hacker News

Alleged Israeli spy company targeted Starlink users(reuters.com)

144 points by mmaia 3 days ago | 33 comments

[flagged]

Relieved this has been posted here, I strongly feel the same and this should be general knowledge given how much public evidence put out by Israel themselves explaining their lunatic plans for the middle east.

[–] slowin 1 day ago

I'm sorry that your top rated comment got flagged. That's ridiculous. My highly rated comment got flagged too. This site has a serious Zionism problem that the mods should address.

[–] kakacik 2 days ago

Its private companies and not state per se, often spawned from young folks going through mandatory military service serving in NSA-like places like Unit 8200, and then continuing their trajectory either locally or in palantirs/faangs.

I don't think morals and ethics are drilled too deep into those recruits, more like 'the end justifies the means' style of operation.

[–] tptacek 2 days ago

Basically every major industrialized country in the world has firms that do stuff like this, and worse.

[–] sentientlaserbe 2 days 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.

[–] tptacek 2 days 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.

[–] gruez 2 days 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)

[–] alsetmusic 2 days 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.

[–] jackb4040 2 days ago

> half

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

[–] newspaper1 2 days 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.

[–] kats 2 days 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/

[–] newspaper1 2 days 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.

[–] pcthrowaway 2 days 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

[–] Dig1t 2 days 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.

[–] tptacek 2 days 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.

[–] overfeed 2 days 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.

[–] tptacek 2 days ago

If you say so. Someone made a claim, suggesting that Israel is somehow the world leader in spyware. That's definitely not true. Seems worth clarifying!

[–] knottn 1 day ago

You do Israel a big disservice honestly. If you are going to defend them, try to do it well. Israel has a PR problem right now, and it’s because discussions are shut down or subverted. Please don’t be a part of that.

[–] hackersnooze1 2 days ago

>and worse

Besides maybe the US, not really no

[–] jameshilliard 2 days 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...

[–] slowin 2 days ago

A lot more information here: https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targ...

[–] ChrisArchitect 2 days ago

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50101813

[–] kats 2 days 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/

[–] timedude 2 days ago

Amazing how these stories disappear from HN front page very quickly.

[–] slowin 2 days 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.

[–] purpleflame1257 2 days ago

Weird sentence structure. It makes it sound like the company is accused of being Israeli.

[–] proshno 2 days ago

Anyone surprised?

https://themillenniumreport.com/2018/08/an-abridged-history-...

[–] dmix 2 days 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.

[–] everdrive 2 days 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.