Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gyaniv 2643 days ago
>The US never EVER helped Saudi to spy on a journalist...

Israel didn't help them either, it just didn't stop an Israeli company from selling certain products to the Saudis. Do you think the US is stopping all companies from doing business with the Saudis, or even just stopping them from selling tools that can be used by the regime against the public?

because they aren't, they are however supposedly doing that with Iran and to a certain extent, with Russia, so it's not like it's something they can't do, it's just that they choose not to.
2 comments
JohnStrangeII 2643 days ago
I'm by far not an expert, but I believe that This business (spyware for governments) works more similar to international weapons dealing. An Israeli company selling spyware to Saudi Arabia will likely at the same time work together with Mossad or another allied intelligence agency. Selling this software provides an obvious entry point, whether for human assets, piggy-backing on the eavesdropping software, or to map out future attack vectors.
link
PNWALIEN3 2643 days ago
The founders and employees were members of the Israeli military cyber-security apparatus, if not Unit 8200 itself.

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/08/25/every...)

I assume most software sold by these companies has backdoors either already shared with Aman/Mossad, or stored to be provided upon request.

link
gyaniv 2642 days ago
They were former members in those organizations, like army vets, and as far as I understand they face a lot of criticism from the Israeli public, if not the government.

I think they are basically like those vets that go and work security for private contractors, and some of them end up working for some really bad people.

About the backdoors, I can't tell, on the one hand, I would assume you're correct, that they do provide access to the Mossad+friends, but on the other hand, if it was discovered, they would lose credibility, and all those basically bad people wouldn't work with them, and any normal entity probably aren't working with them already, so they would lose their entire business.

link