Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Ashare%3A6893432187786465280
#Battle for #World’s #Most #Powerful #Cyberweapon: #ZeroClick: This version of #Pegasus was “zero click”: https://lnkd.in/e8i3nmHz — unlike more common #hacking #software, it did not require users to #click on a #malicious #attachment or link — so the Americans monitoring the #phones could see no evidence of an ongoing #breach. They couldn’t see the Pegasus computers connecting to a #network of #servers around the world, hacking the phone, then connecting back to the equipment at the NJ facility. What they could see, minutes later, was every piece of #data stored on the phone as it unspooled onto the large monitors of the Pegasus computers: every #email, every #photo, every #text thread, every #personal #contact.
#ControlDoctrine #Controls
They could also see the #phone’s #location and even take #control of its #camera and #microphone… During a presentation to officials in Washington, the company demonstrated a new system called #Phantom, that could #hack any number in the #UnitedStates. Israel had granted a special license to NSO, one that permitted its Phantom system to attack U.S. numbers. The license allowed for only one type of client: U.S. government agencies. A slick brochure put together for potential customers by #NSO’s U.S. subsidiary says that #Phantom allows American #law #enforcement and #spy #agencies to get #intelligence “by #extracting and #monitoring crucial data from #mobile #devices.” The system, it says, will “turn your target’s smartphone into an #intelligence gold mine.”
#QuantumUncertainty
The current showdown between the #UnitedStates and #Israel over #NSO demonstrates how #governments increasingly view powerful #cyberweapons the same way they have long viewed #military #hardware like #fighter #jets and #centrifuges: not only as pivotal to #national #defense but also as a #currency with which to buy #influence around the world. #Cyberweapons have changed #international #relations more profoundly than any advance since the advent of the #atomic #bomb. In some ways, they are even more profoundly #destabilizing — they are comparatively cheap, easily distributed and can be deployed without consequences to the #attacker.
Beyond #Space to #Cyberspace
As #cyberweapons began to eclipse #fighter #jets in the schemes of #military #planners, a different kind of #weapons industry emerged in Israel. Veterans of Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the #NSA, poured into secretive start-ups in the private sector, giving rise to a multibillion-dollar #cybersecurity industry. None of these firms have been as wildly successful, or as strategically useful to the Israeli government, as NSO. The firm has its roots in a former chicken coop in Bnai Zion, an agricultural cooperative just outside Tel Aviv.
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