NSO Should Lose Spyware Case for Discovery Violations, Meta Says

53 pointsposted 7 hours ago
by jmsflknr
(news.bloomberglaw.com)

32 Comments

bastard_op

4 hours ago

I don't normally say this ever, but good for Meta. I'd love to see NSO banned from US business as a scourge, but...

NSO, Cellbrite, all the good spyware/malware used by governments and connected rich come from Israel companies. The FBI, CIA, and local PD's certainly keep them on speed dial when they need into someone's phone for a legal matter like someone shooting at an orange on stage. Like Diddy said, can't stop, won't stop - cops still need an easy instahack button, and they provide them readily to the highest bidders.

Lots of Israeli "Gartner-rated" "Enterprise Security" vendors like Checkpoint, Radware, Cato Networks, etc too. You wonder if they sell the sickness in one hand, and the cure in another.

JumpCrisscross

3 hours ago

> FBI, CIA, and local PD's certainly keep them on speed dial

NSO was sanctioned by Commerce in 2021. A local PD doing business with them would be akin to doing business with a sanctioned Russian or Iranian entity.

cedws

4 hours ago

NSO ban? It should be an Israel sanction. NSO Group has committed crimes against the people of the West and directly aided their enemies. The Israeli government is complicit in this.

lupusreal

4 hours ago

Sanctions against Israel? It would be a miracle to even get a slight reduction to the money and weapons the American government gifts to them every year.

alephnerd

an hour ago

If you sanction Israel for Wassenar Agreement violations (which it never signed), then the US has to do the same to similar NATO and NATO+ allies like Singapore, the UAE, all of ASEAN, PRC, and a number of Wassenar Agreement members like Turkiye, India, and South Korea.

This is why arms control agreements are basically useless.

alephnerd

an hour ago

> Lots of Israeli "Gartner-rated" "Enterprise Security" vendors like Checkpoint, Radware, Cato Networks, etc too. You wonder if they sell the sickness in one hand, and the cure in another

Not exactly.

The Offensive Security companies like NSO Group are viewed as fairly scummy as well in Israel, but damn if they don't pay good. The kind of person who would become leadership at a NSO type company wouldn't become leadership at a Cato.

Lots of Israelis dislike the culture at the offensive security companies which tends to skew very Wild West and toxic (eg. Taking out new hires to strip clubs and lounges), and these companies in turn largely exist in a legal grey area.

The moment the company becomes a liability (eg. NSO Group), it loses political aircover fairly quickly

Heck, Netenyahu's Likud lead an inquiry against NSO Group and it's founders in 2022 (though this was also because Bibi's confidants were allegedly tapped by the intelligence community in Israel by leveraging NSO [0]), though all this fell to the wayside after the Judical Reforms as well as the Oct 7th attacks.

Also, Israel is a very small country where everyone is 2nd or 3rd degree connects with each other, so professional reputations spread very quickly.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/top-israeli-cop-re...

hypeatei

6 hours ago

Wait Meta is suing the NSO group in U.S. courts? I thought they were based in Israel and basically have protection from the Israeli government.

> the court warned it would not feel reluctant to impose sanctions

Ah okay so basically we're doing the ol' "going on your permanent record" treatment. That means nothing to a state sanctioned malware team.

JumpCrisscross

4 hours ago

> thought they were based in Israel and basically have protection from the Israeli government

They do [1]. That doesn't affect the supremacy of U.S. law.

> so basically we're doing the ol' "going on your permanent record" treatment

Sanctions in law means punishment [2]. In civil law, "sanctions are usually monetary fines." But Meta may go further in seeking damages in equity, which could range from injunctions on NSO targeting Meta to distribution restrictions in the U.S.

Note that NSO and its leadership are already blacklisted by Commerce [3]. This is the same designation we've put on e.g. Russia and Belarus's militaries [4].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jul/25/israel-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_(law)

[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-blacklists-four-compan...

[4] https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2022/04/commerc...

stepupmakeup

6 hours ago

It's always funny when <american government agency> announces "sanctions" on north korean, chinese, russian state sponsored hacking groups. What are you going to do, block them from using AWS?

lesuorac

5 hours ago

Uh, arrest them when they show up in a country with an extradition treaty?

Do you think relatively highly paid individuals don't take foreign vacations?

> [1] That was true for the men released Thursday. Both were arrested on vacation in countries that cooperate with the U.S. Klyushin was arrested in Sion, Switzerland — four people alleged to be co-conspirators remain at large — and Seleznev in Maldives.

[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-releases-russian-ha...

edm0nd

5 hours ago

I mean really the arrest warrants or sanctions are just feel good PR for the agencies issuing them to let the public they are "doing something". It's the only thing they can do. For example, they aint ever going to pop a North Korean threat actor bc they simply cant travel at will.

They do pop Russians traveling outside of the CIS country region on vacation[1].

>According to Europol, a suspected LockBit ransomware developer was arrested in August 2024 at the request of French authorities while on holiday outside of Russia.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/police-arrest...

One of my favorite quotes about these hackers in CIS is, "Who cares if you have hundreds of millions of dollars, you are still stuck in Russia or the CIS region for the rest of your life".

jmwilson

5 hours ago

> they aint ever going to pop a North Korean threat actor bc they simply cant travel at will.

True, but the USG has a long memory and holds grudges. Even if they never travel, they have to be confident every future government of the country will have their back. What's the odds the North Korean or Russian regime substantially changes in their lifetimes? Probably higher than the chance a future US administration will stop caring about an outstanding warrant.

Scoundreller

3 hours ago

Even if their country has their back, that protection racket can come at a cost.

“So and so is looking to arrest you, it would really suck if you got deported or put on this ‘vacation’ to France, wouldn’t it?”

Worth paying up, but if you’re willing to pay anything…

gomerspiles

4 hours ago

Maybe I deceive myself when I think its too early to know if the Marshall plan through Glasnost was the intelligent half of an eternal cycle.

chatmasta

3 hours ago

What’s CIS?

alephnerd

an hour ago

Commonwealth of Independent States - the former Soviet Union

lupusreal

5 hours ago

Russians get got, but Israelis? I don't see the US government pulling many strings to get them.

Malware companies have openly operated in Israel for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley How many extraditions of those guys to America from anywhere have there ever been?

quotz

4 hours ago

Israelis have impunity as you can see on TV these days

mdhb

5 hours ago

There is often a sizeable non public component to some of these things that is firmly more in the gray zone.

For example knowing that there are few legal options to deal with Russian groups who were doing ransomware attacks on hospitals there was recently a public name and shame campaign that lots of people had this exact kind of response to but the actual way they were looking to impose costs on these groups was by making sure that other crime groups in the country were very aware of who these people were, that they didn’t have any meaningful protection but they did have a lot of crypto money that would be very easy to rob from them. The idea was to put them in harms way since as the theory goes it would cause others to think twice.

Tactics differ obviously depending on the target and what options make sense but this was for a non state backed group who didn’t have anything other than a cyber component to them.

salawat

5 hours ago

Did you miss the legislatiin requiring KYC programs for IaaS providers? Basically adds AWS and all othe American clouds to the bucket of companies having to surveil for people on OFAC.

So yes. That's exactly what they'll do.

hypeatei

6 hours ago

Exactly, it just results in misguided measures like IP-range bans. Yeah, sure, that's going to stop a group dedicated to finding zero days and other technical flaws.

tracker1

5 hours ago

Not to mention the NSA/CIA and maybe even FBI are likely also customers.

tptacek

4 hours ago

You think NSA needs to go to NSO for exploits and implants? There's a whole market for this stuff, NSO is just one actor, and far from the best.

nceqs3

5 hours ago

The sanctions the court is talking about are monetary sanctions against the lawyers/defendants, not sanctions, as in the Treasury Department style of sanctions. Two different things.

excalibur

6 hours ago

I want the option where NSO loses but the money goes to the actual victims instead of Zuckerberg

JumpCrisscross

4 hours ago

> want the option where NSO loses but the money goes to the actual victims instead of Zuckerberg

"Punishment has five recognized purposes: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution" [1].

You're describing restitution. We're still on deterrence and incapacitation, i.e. fining NSO so it stays away from America and possibly putting it out of business so it can't keep selling its wares.

[1] https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-purpose...

h4x0rr

6 hours ago

Lots of those victims are dead

erikerikson

5 hours ago

By this logic, maybe we shouldn't charge murders because the murdered party is not around to see justice?

Every victim has family or friends or things they cared about publicly (usually the public presence is the reason they became a victim).

Justice can be found in many ways.

gomerspiles

4 hours ago

We are seeing justice from the many ways. There aren't many people who appreciate waiting on justice in crimes that are ruining a lot to steal a little.