Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, according to an investigation into a massive data leak.
The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.
Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.
Is anyone really surprised? Smartphones are the ideal tools for authoritarian regimes – cameras, microphones, GPS, and other sensors in one neat little package, always on the person, ready to be exploited. Of course criminal regimes are going to abuse them, and of course no smartphone is safe.
Windows Mobile ?
They don’t even need this:
https://www.osnews.com/story/27416/the-second-operating-system-hiding-in-every-mobile-phone/
Each mobile phone has two separate operating systems (actually three, there is another one for the SIM card, but let’s ignore that for the moment).
The “baseband” that coordinates the communications functions runs on an isolated stack, and talks via a modem like interface. They are usually opaque blobs, and can basically do anything they want under the hood. What is more, they would have DMA access to SoC (but not the other way around), so they can poke around main memory.
The good thing is there only a few companies that design the baseband software, so it is not wild west out there. The bad thing also is there are a few companies, and you cannot choose yourself. If they have a backdoor, they will not be publicized (easily).
Also: shall you be worried about your phone being turned on remotely?
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/nsa-remotely-turn-on-phones,news-18854.html
Answer: probably not. If you are not a high value target, they will not bother spending resources on your cell phone.
> What is more, they would have DMA access to SoC
I know of 2 phones that work around this. The Librem 5 and the PinePhone. There may be more.
Both connect the baseband over USB.
That is good to know. Thank you.
Smartphone after Pegasus: Nokia 3310.
Even that has a microphone, and I once saw a message on my Nokia 3330 (a variant of the 3310) display the message “OTA failed” or something similar.
Smartphones are the ideal tools for authoritarian regimes – cameras, microphones, GPS, and other sensors in one neat little package, always on the person, ready to be exploited. Of course criminal regimes are going to abuse them, and of course no smartphone is safe.
Criminal regimes? Who packed all those goodies and put a piece of software that looks like Frankenstein? Was it possible not to use Java? To use OpenBSD instead of Linux? To make stronger cryptography?
There are western countries who belonged to the categories of authoritarian regimes & …course criminal regimes”. cough “”Iraq”, cough “libya”, cough “Vietnam”, cough “Panama”etc. etc. the crimes are endless, humanitarian disaster in human history.
And the Dutch has accepted a terrorist under the pretext that this terrorist is a political asylum: Jose Maria Sison.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trinity-western-supreme-court-law-1.4704460
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1454562/canada-day-muted-as-country-reckons-with-treatment-of-indigenous-other-minorities
We have seen this countless times already. Government surveillance is not limited to smartphones, if that is the case, then surveillance as a tool cannot be used as a form of weapon in human history.
A total of zero people should be shocked by this.
What did you think all this technology was created and is developed for?
So we can stream superhero films and play video games?