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by doe_eyes 708 days ago
They're rich, don't hold civil liberties in high esteem, and don't have a lot of in-house expertise. So, yeah - along with some neighboring states, they're a buyer for tools they use to target journalists, dissidents, etc.

China and Russia are on the same boat, but they are far more capable with in-house tech.

3 comments

OK i see, re-reading this with your top level post is "not all vulnerabilities are the type that could be bought by (insert state actor)", which makes sense (for some reason I thought you meant that they were buying the type of bugs that would end up getting reported to a BBP, but I just misread the original comment).

And yes the Saudis definitely bought software from NSO Group but it's also been used by plenty of other governments, including half the EU...

Also, just to be clear - the US gov buys tons of zerodays.
NSA banking EternalBlue was the reason for Wannacry ransomware proliferation, which killed people due to downtime of hospital systems.