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by DyslexicAtheist 3048 days ago
> You can only buy or lease their software as a state actor, though.

there is a wide spectrum of actors in this space and besides the well known (Gamma/HackingTeam) also include many smaller firms that do not shy from working in a gray area and cater to both criminal enterprises, unstable regimes, warlords. Especially smaller fish fill the niche (AREA[¹], Negg[²], ...)

Though any of these providers they don't just give you a software because "solutions* would (due to their nature) rarely work out of the box. Instead they come with a consulting service contract to ensure the system is correctly used (to facilitate breaching the target). So "state actors" isn't restricted to spy-agencies but low-level law-enforcement who lack the budget and technical know-how for maintaining or creating these tools. So these systems are kind of a poor-mans TAO.

¹ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6367357...

² https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/95357449457630412...