Yet Another Israeli Malware Manufacturer Found Selling To Human Rights Abusers, Targeting iPhones

from the quite-the-homebrew-industry-you've-got-going-there,-Israel dept

Exploit developer NSO Group may be swallowing up the negative limelight these days, but let's not forget the company has plenty of competitors. The US government's blacklisting of NSO arrived with a concurrent blacklisting of malware purveyor, Candiru -- another Israeli firm with a long list of questionable customers, including Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.

Now there's another name to add to the list of NSO-alikes. And (perhaps not oddly enough) this company also calls Israel home. Reuters was the first to report on this NSO's competitor's ability to stay competitive in the international malware race.

A flaw in Apple's software exploited by Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group to break into iPhones in 2021 was simultaneously abused by a competing company, according to five people familiar with the matter.

QuaDream, the sources said, is a smaller and lower profile Israeli firm that also develops smartphone hacking tools intended for government clients.

Like NSO, QuaDream sold a "zero-click" exploit that could completely compromise a target's phones. We're using the past tense not because QuaDream no longer exists, but because this particular exploit (the basis for NSO's FORCEDENTRY) has been patched into uselessness by Apple.

But, like other NSO competitors (looking at you, Candiru), QuaDream has no interest in providing statements, a friendly public face for inquiries from journalists, or even a public-facing website. Its Tel Aviv office seemingly has no occupants and email inquiries made by Reuters have gone ignored.

QuaDream doesn't have much of a web presence. But that's changing, due to this report, which builds on earlier reporting on the company by Haaretz and Middle East Eye. But even the earlier reporting doesn't go back all that far: June 2021. That report shows the company selling a hacking tool called "Reign" to the Saudi government. But that sale wasn't accomplished directly, apparently in a move designed to further distance QuaDream from both the product being sold and the government it sold it to.

According to Haaretz, Reign is being sold by InReach Technologies, Quadream's sister company based in Cyprus, while Quadream runs its research and development operations from an office in the Ramat Gan district in Tel Aviv.

[...]

InReach Technologies, its sales front in Cyprus, according to Haaretz, may be being used in order to fly under the radar of Israel’s defence export regulator.

Reign is apparently the equivalent of NSO's Pegasus, another powerful zero-click exploit that appears to still be able to hack most iPhone models. But it's not a true equivalent. According to this report, the tool can be rendered useless by a single system software update and, perhaps more importantly, cannot be remotely terminated by the entity deploying it, should the infection be discovered by the target. This means targeted users have the opportunity to learn a great deal about the exploit, its deployment, and possibly where it originated.

That being said, it's not cheap:

One QuaDream system, which would have given customers the ability to launch 50 smartphone break-ins per year, was being offered for $2.2 million exclusive of maintenance costs, according to the 2019 brochure. Two people familiar with the software's sales said the price for REIGN was typically higher.

With more firms in the mix -- and more scrutiny from entities like Citizen Lab -- it's only a matter of time before information linking NSO competitors to human rights abuses and indiscriminate targeting of political enemies threatens to make QuaDream and Candiru household names. And, once again, it's time to point out this all could have been avoided by refusing to sell powerful hacking tools to human rights abusers who were obviously going to use the spyware to target critics, dissidents, journalists, ex-wives, etc. That QuaDream chose to sell to countries like Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Mexico pretty much guarantees reports of abusive deployment will surface in the future.

Filed Under: exploits, israel, malware, surveillance, zero days
Companies: nso group, quadream

After Weeks Of Reports Of Misuse Of Its Exploits, NSO Group Considering Shutting Down Its Malware Service

from the if-you-can't-beat-'em,-quit dept

RIP NSO Group. Cause of death: investigative reporting.

It's probably too early to celebrate the demise of Israel's most infamous export, but it's looking like NSO is running out of options. The Israeli government recently (and drastically) reduced the number of approved governments NSO could sell its powerful Pegasus malware to, trimming down the permitted list from 102 countries to 37. That followed blacklisting by the US Commerce Department, which means American tech companies aren't permitted to sell exploits, hardware, or devices to NSO without securing a waiver they're unlikely to receive.

That followed weeks of revelations about how NSO customers were using its Pegasus spyware. According to multiple reports, governments and the occasional king were using NSO tools to target journalists, dissidents, government critics, religious leaders, US State Department employees, an ex-wife, an ex-wife's lawyer, and government officials.

I guess when it's no longer feasible to sell spyware to authoritarians and human rights violators, the only option is to default on your debts and shut down your most toxic product.

The NSO Group, the controversial technology company recently blacklisted by the United States over the illegal use of its spyware, is reportedly considering shutting down its Pegasus operation and selling the entire company to an American investment fund, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

The report, citing officials involved in the talks, said that there are two potential suitors for the embattled company, who have discussed a potential takeover and the shuttering of Pegasus unit, in exchange for a $200 million injection of capital and a pivot into strictly defensive cybersecurity services.

NSO needs the cash. It has millions in debt and whatever plans it had for paying it back have been severely curtailed with its blacklisting by the US government and its reduced customer base.

The U.S. restrictions put added pressure on NSO, which needs to pay back about $450 million in debt, just two years after a management buyout that valued the company at about $1 billion. Moody’s Investors Service said last month there’s an increasing risk the company will violate the terms of its loans.

The problem with ditching Pegasus is that it's NSO's most valuable product. This premium phone exploit accounts for half of NSO's business. Fifty percent of NSO is worth far less than the $200 million the company is hoping to obtain. Now that it's blacklisted, it can't purchase exploits or devices from the US, which means it will be extremely difficult to develop new hacking tools worth selling. There may be a market for defensive tech, but that's likely to be far less popular with foreign governments than zero-click exploits that can be deployed remotely.

Here's how it looks for NSO on the home front, as reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

Defense officials think the sanctions could soon bring about the company’s collapse and a shutdown of its operations. The company depends upon constant innovation: It’s one Apple or Android cellphone update away from the failure of its products. If it doesn’t manage to hold onto the best personnel in the world, the kind who would continue to find vulnerabilities in the operating systems, they won’t have a product.

Senior officials have told Haaretz that the move by the United States has totally paralyzed the company’s future operations. “They’re not able to buy a pen at a Walmart store,” the officials quipped. If an American company wants to sell them products, it needs a special permit.

According to this report, the Israeli government believes its local tech companies are being unfairly targeted by US sanctions. The country is home to 19 companies developing offensive exploits, but so far the US has only blacklisted NSO Group and Candiru. The government appears to have been caught off guard by the sanctions handed down by the Biden Administration after having received much more support and cooperation from the previous president, Donald Trump.

The Israeli government may be reeling a bit from the last few months of negative press targeting NSO, but it really can't blame anyone else for the mess the company is in or the sanctions that have greeted the steady stream of reporting about misuse of its Pegasus spyware. It was directly involved with the sale of the malware to a number of known human rights abusers.

[I]n Israel it is acknowledged that oversight of contracts NSO entered into was too lax. The Netanyahu government gladly traded in spyware, with the Mossad reportedly assisting in the initial mediation of the transactions.

[...]

The company’s sales momentum over the past decade is closely linked to the diplomatic and intelligence-related steps that Netanyahu took, which improved relations with countries in various parts of the world, and where NSO’s technology often served as an asset that brought Israel to the table for the improvement of ties. In the past, Netanyahu ordered the defense establishment to advance offensive cybertechnology deals, and it appears he preferred that overly energetic oversight not be imposed on the deals or the parties to them.

Welp. The shitbirds have come home to roost, as the saying goes.

And if the Israeli government thinks the US Commerce Department overreacted, it won't be pleased with the latest demands from members of the federal government.

More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to sanction four cyber surveillance firms for "enabling human rights abuses" by "selling powerful surveillance technology to authoritarian governments."

The letter, led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California, asks the Treasury Department to sanction Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group, Emirati cybersecurity firm DarkMatter and European surveillance firms Nexa Technologies and Trovicor -- as well as the firms' top executives.

This would go beyond the blacklisting already in place. The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act allows the US president to sanction people and companies for human rights abuses. In this case, the abuses would have been aided and abetted by NSO, rather than participated in directly by NSO execs or employees. While it normally is used to sanction government officials, it has been used in the past to sanction private parties with ties to human rights abusers.

Whether or not sanctions ever arrive, it appears NSO's days are numbered. But there are still plenty of malware purveyors out there. And there are plenty of authoritarians willing to pay top dollar for spy tech that enables them to more efficiently oppress their countries' populations. The exploit market will remain lively. It just may be that one of the most recognizable names in the business will no longer be in business.

Filed Under: exploits, malware, pegasus, spyware, surveillance
Companies: nso group

Apple Sues NSO Group For Targeting IPhone Users With Powerful Exploits

from the [applauds-super-cautiously] dept

NSO Group's year from hell continues. Apple is now suing the Israeli exploit hawker for hacking its customers' iPhones -- customers who include not only the supposed terrorists and dangerous criminals NSO claims its customers target with malware, but also journalists, activists, lawyers, ex-wives, religious leaders, US citizens, and government officials NSO claims its customers don't target.

Apple isn't the first major tech company to sue NSO over its malware. Facebook and WhatsApp sued NSO in 2019, alleging that the use of WhatsApp to deploy powerful exploits violated WhatsApp's terms of use. While this is almost certainly true (deploying malware via WhatsApp is definitely not allowed), WhatsApp appears to want a ruling that would expand the definition of "unauthorized access" under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) that's already been stretched several times by DOJ prosecutors.

On one hand, it would be undeniably enjoyable see NSO get slapped with an order denying it access to WhatsApp and its users, on the other, it wouldn't be helpful at all to turn research (security and otherwise) that violates sites' terms of use into a federal crime.

Unfortunately, Apple's lawsuit [PDF] appears to be asking for something along the same lines. It also stretches the definition of legal standing, alleging it has the right to sue on the behalf of its users because reacting to the deployment of NSO malware has caused it to spend a bit of its billions closing security holes.

That being said, Apple's legal reps sure know how to open a lawsuit. Here's the first paragraph of the suit's introduction:

Defendants are notorious hackers—amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse. They design, develop, sell, deliver, deploy, operate, and maintain offensive and destructive malware and spyware products and services that have been used to target, attack, and harm Apple users, Apple products, and Apple. For their own commercial gain, they enable their customers to abuse those products and services to target individuals including government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and even U.S. citizens.

Welp. That's not going to help NSO's presumably permanently damaged SEO. The next paragraph builds on NSO's "amoral mercenary" reputation by pointing to the US Commerce Department's recent blacklisting of the company -- an act that almost never targets companies operating in countries the US considers to be close allies.

It follows these accusations with NSO's own admissions of malfeasance.

NSO admits that its destructive products have led to violations of “fundamental human rights,” which have been widely recognized and condemned by human rights groups and governments, including the U.S. Government. To ensure that their products can be used by others to maximum effect, NSO reportedly provides ongoing technical support and other services to their clients as they deploy NSO’s spyware against Apple’s products and users, including journalists, human rights activists, dissidents, public officials, and others. Most recently, the Guardian reported that six Palestinian human rights defenders—one of whom is also a U.S. citizen—were attacked and surveilled using NSO’s spyware. Although NSO claims that its spyware “cannot be used to conduct cybersurveillance within the United States,” U.S. citizens have been surveilled by NSO’s spyware on mobile devices that can and do cross international borders.

Then it starts talking about the damage Apple itself has suffered as a result of NSO customers targeting iPhone users.

Defendants force Apple to engage in a continual arms race: Even as Apple develops solutions and enhances the security of its devices, Defendants are constantly updating their malware and exploits to overcome Apple’s own security upgrades.

These constant recovery and prevention efforts require significant resources and impose huge costs on Apple. Defendants’ unlawful malware activities have caused and continue to cause Apple significant damages in excess of $75,000 and in an amount to be proven at trial.

That's the amount of damages needed to keep a lawsuit in federal court. But further into the lawsuit, Apple specifically cites the law amended by the CFAA and quotes a much lower price for actual monetary damages.

Defendants’ actions caused Apple to incur a loss as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 1030(e)(11), in an amount in excess of $5,000 during a one-year period, including the expenditure of resources to investigate and remediate Defendants’ conduct.

That puts the CFAA in play as Apple advocates on behalf of its users and its own defensive efforts. But standing is a tricky thing, as is attempting to hold NSO directly responsible for the activities of its customers.

Apple attempts to show standing by claiming end users are only borrowing the software it creates, so iPhone users targeted by NSO malware are, in effect, having their rented homes damaged by home invaders. Apple is the landlord, so to speak, so it believes it is due direct compensation for something that happened to its tenants. This is a dangerous argument to make, considering its the same one the DOJ deployed when it was trying to force Apple to break encryption on the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone.

Defendants violated and attempted to violate 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2) because they intentionally accessed and attempted to access the iOS operating system on Apple’s users’ devices without authorization and, on information and belief, obtained information from Apple’s users’ devices.

Defendants violated 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(4) because they knowingly and with the intent to defraud accessed the operating system on Apple’s users’ devices without authorization using information from Apple’s servers and then installed highly invasive spyware on those Apple users’ devices, and by means of such conduct furthered the intended fraud and obtained something of value.

[...]

Apple retains ownership of its operating-system software pursuant to its Software License Agreements.

We'll see whose stretching works better. Apple wants to be able to represent users who've been targeted, citing its licensing and its own (apparently minimal) expenses related to patching security holes. NSO, on the other hand, will want out of this suit and has deployed some creative arguments of its own defending itself against WhatsApp's litigation.

It remains to be seen whether its argument that it can't be sued directly for the actions of its customers will convince the court WhatsApp's lawsuit should be dismissed. But it has already seen another of its defenses shot down at the appellate level, which refused to extend sovereign immunity to the private company that sold exploits to government agencies. The Ninth Circuit refused to buy the argument that selling stuff to government agencies makes one an extension of that government agency for immunity purposes.

We'll see what the court makes of this one. We already know at least one of NSO's defenses is foreclosed by precedent. But we shouldn't necessarily cheer Apple on just because the target of its suit is reprehensible. A ruling in favor of Apple's CFAA allegations could prove disastrous for researchers and others who bypass terms of service restrictions for far less malignant reasons.

On the bright side, Apple is handing out a lot of money to researchers who've exposed plenty of malfeasance by NSO Group's customers.

Apple commends groups like the Citizen Lab and Amnesty Tech for their groundbreaking work to identify cybersurveillance abuses and help protect victims. To further strengthen efforts like these, Apple will be contributing $10 million, as well as any damages from the lawsuit, to organizations pursuing cybersurveillance research and advocacy.

Apple will also support the accomplished researchers at the Citizen Lab with pro-bono technical, threat intelligence, and engineering assistance to aid their independent research mission, and where appropriate, will offer the same assistance to other organizations doing critical work in this space.

On top of this, Apple will continue notifying users it believes have been targeted by NSO malware, which is only going to result in more negative press for the malware purveyor. If NSO wanted to be perceived as a skilled warrior in the fight against international crime and terrorism, it blew that chance when it decided to sell to notorious human rights abusers and engage in zero oversight of the use of its products. It earned the reputation it now has and will carry with it forever, no matter how this lawsuit plays out.

Filed Under: cfaa, exploits, iphones, license, malware, ownership, research, spyware
Companies: apple, nso group

Chinese Government's Hacker Competition Is Being Used To Find Exploits To Wield Against Uighur Citizens

from the aiding-and-abetting dept

Anything the Chinese government can weaponize against its Uighur Muslim population, it will. And has. Further details about an iPhone exploit discovered by Chinese hackers show the Chinese government got into the bug bounty program solely to find vulnerabilities to wield against the government's least-liked residents.

Patrick Howell O'Neill's article for MIT Technology Review points out Chinese hackers used to participate in popular hacking competitions like Pwn2Own, providing invaluable assistance to tech companies and tech users by finding vulnerabilities that could be patched before they were exploited by malicious hackers.

In 2017, Chinese participation in international competitions came to a halt. The founder and CEO of tech giant Qihoo 360 publicly criticized Chinese hackers for helping foreign tech companies find and patch security flaws. The CEO suggested this talent should stay at home and help the government find vulnerabilities to exploit.

That's exactly what has happened. The Chinese government banned participation in foreign hacking competitions and started its own. The first homegrown event was won by a researcher working for Qihoo 360, who found an exploit that allowed malicious actors to take control of even the latest iPhones simply by steering the iPhone user to a webpage containing malware.

This was patched two months later by Apple, quietly and with little attention drawn to it. But incidents occurring in the two months between the discovery and the patch didn't go unnoticed. Google's security researchers observed unusual activity and wrote about it.

[I]n August of [2019], Google published an extraordinary analysis into a hacking campaign it said was “exploiting iPhones en masse.” Researchers dissected five distinct exploit chains they’d spotted “in the wild.” These included the exploit that won Qixun [of Qihoo 360] the top prize at Tianfu, which they said had also been discovered by an unnamed “attacker.”

Now, more details about that string of attacks has been revealed. And it shows the Chinese government took the winning exploit and weaponized it against its Uighur population.

Shortly after Google’s researchers noted the attacks, media reports connected the dots: the targets of the campaign that used the Chaos exploit were the Uyghur people, and the hackers were linked to the Chinese government. Apple published a rare blog post that confirmed the attack had taken place over two months: that is, the period beginning immediately after Qixun won the Tianfu Cup and stretching until Apple issued the fix.

This has now been confirmed by another source: the US government. Its surveillance agencies also picked up on the malicious hacking efforts and noted their targeting of China's favorite target of oppression. And it was the government's intervention that sped up Apple's response to the exploit.

The US quietly informed Apple, which had already been tracking the attack on its own and reached the same conclusion: the Tianfu hack and the Uyghur hack were one and the same. The company prioritized a difficult fix.

This is the sort of cooperation one prefers to see. The federal government has often portrayed Apple as an enemy -- not just of agencies like the DOJ, but of the American public. In this case, the government worked with Apple to stop attacks on foreign citizens by a foreign government. The Chinese government made the most of this exploit for two months -- one it obtained through a homegrown hacking competition that appears to exist solely to create offensive tech weapons for state-ordained hacking.

Meanwhile, the hacker who discovered the exploit and collected the cash (all while working for the company whose CEO called for Chinese hackers to stop helping foreign companies and start helping The Man stick it to locals and foreign adversaries) is trying to distance himself from the damage his exploit has wrought.

When we contacted Qixun Zhao via Twitter, he strongly denied involvement, although he also said he couldn’t remember who came into possession of the exploit code. At first, he suggested the exploit wielded against Uyghurs was probably used “after the patch release.”

Both of these claims are untrue. And both have been debunked by both independent research and US government surveillance. While it's unwise to tangle with the Chinese government by refusing to hand over discovered vulnerabilities, it's probably a little easier to sidestep that obligation by sitting out government-sponsored hacking competitions. In the end, this isn't the researcher's fault. The government chose to use it this way. But anyone entering a Chinese government-sponsored hacking competition is likely well aware any discoveries they make will be weaponized by an extremely oppressive government.

Filed Under: china, exploits, hackathon, hackers, hacking competition, surveillance, uighurs
Companies: apple

Malware Merchant NSO Group Caught Leaving Harvested Location Data Exposed

from the oh-well-'little-people'-aren't-the-end-users-so-who-cares dept

Israeli surveillance tech firm NSO Group is something else. (Pejorative, yo.) It set up shop in a contested country where it's not all that paranoid to say everyone is out to get them. (But it's still a little paranoid, if not a lot racist.) That being said, Israel doesn't have a lot of nearby allies. And its ongoing conflict with Palestine hasn't made it any new friends.

You'd think a government contractor operating out of this space would be more judicious with its sales efforts. But finding new customers seems to be more important to NSO Group than defending its own country against attacks. NSO has sold its pervasive surveillance products -- ones that leverage popular messaging apps to create spy-holes in end-to-end encryption -- to anyone who wants them, including those that would turn these tools against Israeli citizens, journalists, and activists.

NSO has enabled a global war on dissent and criticism. It's not the only company that takes a hands-off approach to sales -- justifying the money in its pocket with claims it's nothing more than an exploit-hawking middleman. This has earned it some justifiable disdain. It has also earned it lawsuits, including one filed by a company too big to ignore: Facebook.

Multiple governments have purchased exploits from NSO, resulting in a worldwide war on journalists and activists. This makes NSO richer. But it doesn't make the company any smarter. NSO and Israel briefly joined forces to engage in domestic surveillance, utilizing NSO's malware to facilitate COVID contact tracing -- an effort swiftly blocked by an Israeli court.

NSO hasn't slowed down its surveillance efforts -- the ones deployed by its customers. But it has again managed to generate unfavorable headlines and coverage. The company, whose offers of contact tracing were rejected by an Israeli court, hasn't dialed back its efforts to place people under surveillance -- supposedly for the public good.

But its exploits have their own security flaws. While it was trying to sell governments its contract tracing goods, it failed to secure some of the data it had been gathering in hopes of vertically integrating its spy tech and its "concern" for the general population's health. Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch:

NSO, a private intelligence company best known for developing and selling governments access to its Pegasus spyware, went on the charm offensive earlier this year to pitch its contact-tracing system, dubbed Fleming, aimed at helping governments track the spread of COVID-19. Fleming is designed to allow governments to feed location data from cell phone companies to visualize and track the spread of the virus. NSO gave several news outlets each a demo of Fleming, which NSO says helps governments make public health decisions “without compromising individual privacy.”

But in May, a security researcher told TechCrunch that he found an exposed database storing thousands of location data points used by NSO to demonstrate how Fleming works — the same demo seen by reporters weeks earlier.

NSO has responded to the hole it didn't close until notified by TechCrunch -- months after the first notification by the security researcher. It says the data seen in the breach isn't "real and genuine data."

Well, we'll see if that's true. At this point, this appears to be bullshit. As Whittaker notes, NSO's statement conflicts with news reports about NSO's use of location data sold to it by third-party brokers who gather location info from phone apps. NSO used this data to "train" its contact tracing AI. It's still "real and genuine data," even if NSO wasn't (yet!) using it in real-word applications.

TechCrunch asked researchers at Forensic Architecture, an academic unit at Goldsmiths, University of London that studies and examines human rights abuses, to investigate. The researchers published their findings on Wednesday, concluding that the exposed data was likely based on real phone location data.

Whatever the real-world applications by NSO, the fact is NSO utilized data of thousands of individuals from multiple countries (Rwanda, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain) to train an AI it was pitching to world governments -- a pitch that likely did not inform potential end users NSO would be buying data in bulk from brokers who are generally unconcerned about local data privacy laws.

NSO may be trying to rehabilitate its image by offering its considerable surveillance power to the fight against COVID, but its efforts show it's really still just in the business of collecting everything it can while expanding its user base to whoever's willing to buy -- even if it includes foreign enemies.

A failure to secure a database -- even if it's only filled with "trial" data -- is a monumental self-own. This indicates NSO isn't nearly as careful as it should be, considering the wealth of data/communications it helps government agencies siphon from targets' devices. When millions of people around the world are just grist for the surveillance mill, it rarely seems imperative to protect the data you've harvested from them. The only thing that matters to NSO is surveillance and the profit made. Collateral damage doesn't affect its bottom line -- not when there's a host of human rights violators lining up to buy your goods.

Filed Under: data breach, exploits, hacking, location data, security, surveillance
Companies: nso group

Israel's NSO Group Exploits And Malware Again Being Used To Target Journalists In The Middle East

from the are-we-the-baddies-asked-no-one-at-NSO-ever dept

You'd think the government of a land surrounded by enemies would do more to regulate malware distribution by local companies. It's one thing to hold your enemies close. It's quite another to provide them with the tools to ensure your own downfall.

One would think malware purveyors like the Israel's NSO Group would post photos of countries like Saudi Arabia on its "DO NOT ACCEPT CHECKS FROM THESE GOVERNMENTS" wall at its HQ. But it doesn't care. It sells to whoever will buy, even if that means subjecting Israeli citizens to surveillance programs run by Israel's enemies.

This has been part of NSO's far from illustrious history for years. When not being sued by American companies for leveraging their messaging services to deliver malware, NSO Group has allowed a variety of authoritarian governments to spy on activists, journalists, and dissidents with its toolkit of exploits and scalable attacks.

The latest expose on NSO's unsavory tactics comes from Citizen Lab, which has been exposing the nastiness of malware purveyors for years. Citizen Lab says NSO is still allowing Israel's enemies to target critics, making it far more dangerous for them to engage in activities that expose heinous government actions. Unsurprisingly, it's longtime human rights violators making the most of whatever NSO Group will sell them.

In July and August 2020, government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera. The personal phone of a journalist at London-based Al Araby TV was also hacked.

The phones were compromised using an exploit chain that we call KISMET, which appears to involve an invisible zero-click exploit in iMessage. In July 2020, KISMET was a zero-day against at least iOS 13.5.1 and could hack Apple’s then-latest iPhone 11.

Based on logs from compromised phones, we believe that NSO Group customers also successfully deployed KISMET or a related zero-click, zero-day exploit between October and December 2019.

The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator SNEAKY KESTREL that we attribute to the United Arab Emirates.

Al Jazeera is one of the only independent news outlets covering Middle East issues. That makes it a popular target for governments that would prefer their own narratives dominate news coverage. NSO's tools make it easier to undercut competing narratives by compromising independent reporting and intimidating journalists who won't act as stenographers for government talking heads.

Citizen Lab's investigation uncovered attacks on journalists' phones, resulting in exfiltration of data and communications. In addition, it saw evidence of capabilities that are present in NSO's malware, even if they aren't being exploited yet. These include taking control of mics on devices to surreptitiously record in-person conversations, as well as accessing audio of encrypted phone conversations. In addition, the malware has the ability to track users' locations and access their stored credentials.

These are powerful tools. And like all powerful tools, they shouldn't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. But NSO Group not only allows them to fall into the wrong hands, it makes its own countrymen and allies targets by actively placing them in the wrong hands. Then it stands back and says it has no control over its customers' actions, even if it knows certain customers are definitely not going to use these powers for good.

Filed Under: exploits, journalists, malware, surveillance, zero day
Companies: al jazeera, nso group

Chinese Spies Intercepted NSA Malware Attack, Weaponized It Against Targets Around The World

from the fun-for-the-whole-IC-family! dept

You don't own the exploits you've created. That's the lesson the NSA has learned over the past few years as its hacking tools have made their way into the public domain via leaks. Of course, the harshest parts of this lesson have been felt by the general public, rather than the NSA, however. The leaked tools were swiftly repurposed to generate a new strain of ransomware, which took down dozens of businesses and government services around the world.

But it's not just a random assortment of internet baddies wreaking havoc with NSA hacking tools and exploits. It's also state-sponsored hackers making use of these tools. A report from Symantec shows other nations are more than willing to turn our state-sponsored attacks against us -- demonstrating the danger of engaging in a cyberwar using weaponized code.

Chinese intelligence agents acquired National Security Agency hacking tools and repurposed them in 2016 to attack American allies and private companies in Europe and Asia, a leading cybersecurity firm has discovered. The episode is the latest evidence that the United States has lost control of key parts of its cybersecurity arsenal.

Based on the timing of the attacks and clues in the computer code, researchers with the firm Symantec believe the Chinese did not steal the code but captured it from an N.S.A. attack on their own computers — like a gunslinger who grabs an enemy’s rifle and starts blasting away.

So much for the theory the best defense against a bad guy with malware is a good guy with malware. The NSA's hacking tools were thwarted and rerouted to target US defense tech companies. This preceded the dumping of NSA malware and exploits by the Shadow Brokers by several months, indicating China's hackers are more than capable of detecting US-sponsored attacks as they're happening and skillful enough to turn our cyberweapons into their cyberweapons.

This isn't to say the NSA and other US agencies should not be utilizing exploits and engaging in cyberattacks on enemy targets. This is saying the NSA and others need to exercise far more responsibility when doing so. For years, the NSA has refused to honestly participate in the Vulnerability Equities Process, allowing security holes in software used by thousands of businesses and millions of US citizens to go unpatched for years.

Now that its own tools are being repurposed into weapons -- and, in this case, by one of its targets -- the Intelligence Community can no longer sit back and pretend sacrificing the security of computers users around the world is an acceptable trade-off for the security of the United States.

For starters, this report shows the NSA's attack of a Chinese target actually made the United States less secure. Furthermore, the report indicates the IC is not being honest with itself or its oversight about the risks its cyberweapons pose.

“We’ve learned that you cannot guarantee your tools will not get leaked and used against you and your allies,” said Eric Chien, a security director at Symantec.

Now that nation-state cyberweapons have been leaked, hacked and repurposed by American adversaries, Mr. Chien added, it is high time that nation states “bake that into” their analysis of the risk of using cyberweapons — and the very real possibility they will be reassembled and shot back at the United States or its allies.

Being a willing participant in the Vulnerability Equities Process would go a long way towards mitigating collateral damage. It may blunt the effectiveness of the NSA's exploits, but that may be the price the NSA has to pay to actually keep the country more secure. As it stands now, the NSA cannot honestly claim its tools won't leak or that its cyberweapons won't be detected and re-deployed against targets in the United States. But since it rarely pays a higher price than receiving the occasional angry letter from Congress, it has seen no reason to alter its tactics.

Filed Under: china, cyber weapons, exploits, malware, nsa

EternalSuffering: NSA Exploits Still Being Successfully Used To Hijack Computers More Than A Year After Patching

from the can't-stop-won't-stop dept

Everything old and awful is new again. And still awful. Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch that the NSA's purloined kit of computer nasties is still causing problems more than a year after security patches were issued by affected vendors.

[A]kamai says that attackers are using more powerful exploits to burrow through the router and infect individual computers on the network. That gives the attackers a far greater scope of devices it can target, and makes the malicious network far stronger.

“While it is unfortunate to see UPnProxy being actively leveraged to attack systems previously shielded behind the NAT, it was bound to happen eventually,” said Akamai’s Chad Seaman, who wrote the report.

There are more technical details in Akamai's report, which notes the deployment of EternalRed and EternalBlue, which target Linux and Windows machines respectively. It appears to be a massive crime of opportunity, with attackers possibly scanning the entire internet for vulnerable ports/paths and injecting code to gain control of computers and devices. The "shotgun approach" isn't efficient but it is getting the job done. Akamai refers to this new packaging of NSA exploits as EternalSilence, after the phrase "galleta silenciosa" ("silent cookie/cracker") found in the injected rulesets.

The damage caused by this latest wave of repurposed surveillance code could still be rather severe, even with several rounds of patches immunizing a large number of devices against this attack.

Currently, the 45,113 routers with confirmed injections expose a total of 1.7 million unique machines to the attackers. We've reached this conclusion by logging the number of unique IPs exposed per router, and then added them up. It is difficult to tell if these attempts led to a successful exposure as we don't know if a machine was assigned that IP at the time of the injection. Additionally, there is no way to tell if EternalBlue or EternalRed was used to successfully compromise the exposed machine. However, if only a fraction of the potentially exposed systems were successfully compromised and fell into the hands of the attackers, the situation would quickly turn from bad to worse.

More of the same, then. Perhaps not at the scale seen in the past, but more attacks using the NSA's hoarded exploits. Hoarding exploits is a pretty solid plan, so long as they don't fall into the hands of… well, anyone else really. Failing to plan for this inevitability is just one of the many problems with the NSA's half-assed participation in the Vulnerability Equities Process.

Since the tools began taking their toll on the world's computer systems last year, there's been no sign the NSA is reconsidering its stance on hunting and hoarding exploits. The intelligence gains are potentially too large to be sacrificed for the security of millions of non-target computer users. It may claim these tools are essential to national security, but for which nation? The exploits wreaked havoc all over the world, but it would appear the stash of exploits primarily benefited one nation before they were inadvertently dumped into the public domain. Do the net gains in national security outweigh the losses sustained worldwide? I'd like to see the NSA run the numbers on that.

Filed Under: exploits, malware, nsa, online security, vulnerabilities

Israeli Exploit Developer Caught Negotiating Spyware Sales With Saudi Government

from the got-'em-right-in-the-optics dept

More ugly news has surfaced about Israeli malware developer NSO Group. Over the past year, investigations have uncovered sales of phone-targeting spyware to countries known mostly for their human rights violations. Even less questionable governments have purchased NSO's software ostensibly for law enforcement purposes only to use it to target activists, journalists, and government critics.

There's no telling how US agencies will deploy this malware, but there's no question federal entities like the DEA think NSO spyware would be a useful addition to their investigative tool kits. The US government doesn't appear to be worried about getting in bed with tech companies willing to sell software to blacklisted countries, so NSO Group is still a viable option.

Haaretz has obtained information showing NSO is willing to sell its exploits to its own enemies. Unfortunately, Haaretz has also decided to paywall its discovery, so we'll be pointing you to the Times of Israel's reporting instead.

An Israeli company that specializes in cyber espionage tools reportedly negotiated a multi-million-dollar deal with Saudi Arabia to sell a technology that allows governments to hack their citizens’ cellphones, and to listen to calls as well as conversations that take place near the phones.

Representatives from the Herzliya-based NSO Group held meetings with Saudi officials in Vienna and, apparently, also in a Gulf State to negotiate a $55 million sale of their Pegasus 3 software, the Haaretz daily reported on Sunday.

These negotiations occurred shortly before Mohammed bin Salman kicked his purge machinery into high gear. Unfortunately, the documents (which surfaced due to a lawsuit filed against NSO by an employee who says the company screwed him on commissions) don't say whether or not the Saudi government chose to purchase this software and/or whether it was used to help MBS hunt down his political opponents.

From what has been seen, NSO tried to play it both ways while negotiating a deal with the Saudis. It refused to identify the person behind an anti-government Twitter account but did offer to demonstrate the effectiveness of tools designed to hijack targets' cellphones.

In response to the recent stream of criticism, NSO Group also tried to have it both ways:

The NSO Group has insisted in the past that it sells its software to clients on the condition that it be used only against crime and terrorism, and has shirked responsibility in cases where it was allegedly used for civil rights abuses.

"We made them promise to only use the tools for good" is a pretty weak defense of sales to countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. And it certainly doesn't excuse approaching the Saudi government with tools NSO certainly knew would not be used for good. Then again, our president just made it clear no amount of murdered journalists is going to stand in the way of selling weapons to Mohammed bin Salman's government, so there's really no taking the high road in international relations should it be discovered the Saudi government is using Israeli tools to hunt down dissenters… or Israeli natsec personnel.

Filed Under: espionage, exploits, israel, jamal khashoggi, journalists, mohammed bin salman, saudi arabia, spying
Companies: nso group

Leaked NSA Exploits Shifting From Ransomware To Cryptocurrency Mining

from the now...-for-my-next-trick dept

Will we ever see a complete postmortem of the damage done by leaked NSA software exploits? All signs point to "no."

[M]ore than a year since Microsoft released patches that slammed the backdoor shut, almost a million computers and networks are still unpatched and vulnerable to attack.

Although WannaCry infections have slowed, hackers are still using the publicly accessible NSA exploits to infect computers to mine cryptocurrency.

This report, from Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch, says there's really no endpoint in sight for the unintended consequences of exploit hoarding. But at this point, it's really no longer the NSA or Microsoft to blame for the continued rampage. Stats from Shodan show more than 300,000 unpatched machines in the United States alone.

EternalBlue-based malware still runs rampant, but the focus has shifted from ransom to cryptocurrency. An unnamed company recently watched the NSA's exploit turn its computers into CPU ATMs.

Nobody knows that better than one major Fortune 500 multinational, which was hit by a massive WannaMine cryptocurrency mining infection just days ago.

“Our customer is a very large corporation with multiple offices around the world,” said Amit Serper, who heads the security research team at Boston-based Cybereason.

“Once their first machine was hit the malware propagated to more than 1,000 machines in a day,” he said, without naming the company.

Fun stuff. And all made possible by the US government. Sure, indirectly, but it's not like no one in the private sector ever expressed concerns about the agency's vulnerability hoarding and the possibility of exactly this sort of thing happening. The exploit the NSA thought was too good to give up was taken from it and handed over to the malware-crafting masses to inflict misery around the world. Enemies were made -- and not all of them were software and hardware developers.

There will never be a full accounting of the damage done. Yes, the NSA never thought its secret stash would go public, but that doesn't excuse its informal policy of never disclosing massive vulnerabilities until it's able to wring every last piece of intel from their deployment. And there's a chance this will happen again in the future if the agency isn't more proactive on the disclosure front. It was foolhardy to believe its tools would remain secret indefinitely. It's especially insane to believe this now.

Filed Under: cryptocurrency, eternalblue, exploits, mining, nsa, ransomware, wannacry