Probe reveals previously secret Israeli spyware that infects targets via ads Israeli software maker Insanet has reportedly developed a commercial product called Sherlock that can infect devices via online adverts to snoop on targets and collect data about them for the biz's clients. This is according to an investigation by Haaretz, which this week claimed the spyware system had been sold to a country …
> Insanet received approval from Israel's Defense Ministry to sell Sherlock globally as a military product albeit under various tight restrictions, such as only selling to Western nations
You have got to be kidding. Besides do they seriously think such a tool will stay a secret. What is it about modern Operating Systems that render then so susceptible to hacking.
Israeli hacking firm NSO Group offered Saudis cellphone spy tools – report
Hooking Candiru Another Mercenary Spyware Vendor Comes into Focus
Meta Security Exec Hacked and Tracked for a Year by 'Predator' Spyware
What is it about modern Operating Systems that render then so susceptible to hacking.
They're designed from the ground up to be insecure, offering features and functionality most users neither want nor need. So every time there's a new OS update, we need to buy a faster PC, more memory etc just to run the bloated OS. Then all that stuff gets hidden under the hood, so most users just leave well alone. Like just fire up Task Mangler in a Windows box and try to make sense of what all the processes & services running do, and why they're running.
Sadly, the genie has been long out of the bottle. Legislators have some simple solutions. Like pop-ups on install asking "Do you want advertising, stalking?" Yes, or fsk off. But legislating something like that would cause Big Tech to become small tech because they're making billions from collecting and flogging our personal data. Then there's all the shady shite with 'dark patterns'. I think the solution involves inviting 'advertising execs' to a conference somewhere and just shooting the feckers. It's a sad sign the way our society is going that so many 'executitves' think that wholesale privacy invasion and monetisation is acceptable.
it is also the fact we now allow arbitrary code to run on our machines in the form of Javascript, etc.
I won't argue with that, not to mention Word macros, Excel macros, WASM etc.
However, even just opening an image can be enough, for example when there are bugs in image decoding libraries. There's no separation between "program" and "data", and the complexity is mind-blowing.
But we do have no-execute options on memory segments, and other containment approaches such as AppArmour, but using them is just kind of hard so developers generally don't. As always, it comes down to the fastest/cheapest/easiest route. And so orifices are left gaping...
In the case of buggy image-rendering libraries, it's not a Harvard/Princeton issue, and strict code/data separation wouldn't help with many exploits. Buggy code is buggy code. Yes, strict separation eliminates in-process shellcode injection, but it's hardly a panacea; you still have ROP, for example, and if you can get some arbitrary data written to storage and subsequently executed all bets are off.
How very bad and odd and fcuking hypocritical it is to have all you pussies out there not hyperventilating and wetting yourselves about big bad Israel like you do whenever some big bad Sino-Soviet type threat is imagined to be worthy of excessive defense budget appropriation for unicorn and ponzi spending and population brainwashing.
And all for fistsful of shekels and dollars that highlight the gluttonous self-destructive greed for the unworthy power and malevolent influence of a chosen deluded tyrannical few ..... and that was is no heavenly task doing GODs’ Works. Of that you can be diabolically sure.
What is it that was plainly said to be heeded, and reported many ancient moons ago ? .......
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. ....... https://www.biblehub.com/matthew/7-5.htm
《I believe along with the obligatory frog pills - this one is supposed to be taken with a touch of salt.》
I think I would prefer the Dean of the UU any day. Slightly more coherent... and the frog pills usually return him to some sense.
Appears if anyone has the temerity to question the actions or policies of the State of Israel, even, as here, obliquely, the US religous right (purportedly christian) and associated lunatics pop out of the woodwork spouting this sort of incoherent nonsense.
Appears if anyone has the temerity to question the actions or policies of the State of Israel, even, as here, obliquely, the US religous right (purportedly christian) and associatedlunatics pop out of the woodwork spouting this sort of incoherent nonsense. .... Bebu
Hmmm? Your response, Bebu, in defence of questionable actions and policies would more than just suggest you have a basic understanding of such incoherent nonsense as would reference and draw attention to them ..... and you find it both somewhat disagreeable and revealingly offensive.
In that frame of mind though, one is certain to not be alone, although that is surely cold comfort indeed whenever surrounded by things as they are, because that is the way that it is whenever realities to be suffered and experienced are the result of questionable actions and policies never adequately effectively challenged and righted?
How to make almighty strange enemies and not influence power and peoples springs always to mind whenever surrounded by such disagreeable and offensive things.
Erm, I _think_ AMFM was actually saying exactly that. That is, everyone is happy to jump aboard for Big Bad Ruskies, but noticeably ignores Israel, because, Jews, innit (when one ought to separate the two)? The Israeli defined definition of anti-semitism handily allows it to throw any criticism of the State of Israel under the bus, too.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/13/antisemitism-definition-used-by-uk-universities-leading-to-unreasonable-accusations
The Mayhem and Madness and Mindlessness that Ignorance Feeds and Relies Upon for the Survival of Arrogant Agencies (1) .... and what can be done about it in a virtual instant to make an ever expanding difference and strengthening improvement (2)
(1) ...... The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History ..... and why television and media are essential for population command and control
(2) ....... And If you can’t beat it, join it, and change it from within
How very bad and odd and fcuking hypocritical it is to have all you pussies out there not hyperventilating and wetting yourselves about big bad Israel like you do whenever some big bad Sino-Soviet type threat is imagined to be worthy of excessive defense budget appropriation for unicorn and ponzi spending and population brainwashing.
Here's a bunch of periods and commas, I think you may need those: .........,,,,,,,,,,
Making online ad industry less lucrative will be sufficient to keep the free services alive.
By less lucrative I mean banning targeted ads and other tracking. Search ads will be as relevant as before - that is when a user wants it.
Tracking is becoming especially dangerous with advancing AI. Because soon it will be sufficient to type a question to identify any person, instead of conducting complex database analysis.
I pay quite a lot for my Internet service. I also subscribe to news organizations and I buy stuff off the usual suspects. So I put quite a lot of money into the system.
For that I get essentially useless content on my phone -- just too crammed, to interrupted, a visual mess -- and marginal content on my tablet. Things are better on the desktop because I can block a lot of the crap that gets pushed from the web (its less important on the phone because I don't bother to use it to browse, more trouble than its worth).
The 'service' that the Internet companies are rendering isn't that valuable any more. Google's search is useless now -- too much 'search optimization'. (DuckDuckGo is rather better now.) I don't need their proprietary communication formats, mapping is useful but realistically conventional mapping is not only more detailed but reflects that geography doesn't change that much over time. And so on -- ultimately it comes down to today's Internet being a festering mess of ueslessness.
And so on -- ultimately it comes down to today's Internet being a festering mess of ueslessness. ..... martinusher
:-) That might have been so before AI and Large Language Modelling Machines arrived on the ACTive* Scene with its presenting of much bigger pictures for Greater IntelAIgent Games Play. Now though is it a Veritable and Vital and Virulent Virtual Field of Absolutely Fabulous Fabless Dreams for Remote Proxy Realisation via Alien Intervention.
One thing for sure, martinusher, is that it is a truly disruptively creative, and even extremely destructive status quo market changer ..... whenever one knows both what needs to be done and what one needs others to also do and how it all is to be done guaranteeing failsafe success ‽ .
* ...... Advanced Cyber Treat/Threat
... or an AI superintelligence that has worked out a (laboured) acronym:
Greater IntelAIgent Games Play. Now though is it a Veritable and Vital and Virulent Virtual Field of Absolutely Fabulous Fabless Dreams for Remote Proxy Realisation via Alien Intervention.
GIAGP
VVVVFAFFDRPRAI
may be a most excellent joke or pun in another language
Just like USAians often struggle with sarcasm and I (a brit) struggle with some french jokes, we may need to shuffle over and make room for superintelligent AI jokes
--> with this it all becomes clear
And should ever SMARTR Beings with Superintelligent AI work out Mastery of Global Operating Devices for Greater IntelAIgent Games Play in a Veritable and Vital and Virulent Virtual Field of Absolutely Fabulous Fabless Dreams for Remote Proxy Realisation via Alien Intervention will it be no most excellent joke to poke fun and puns at in any language, a pressbutton.
In that case, are the jokers amongst the greatest of greater fools, to be saved from being despised and derision only by the indisputable fact that they know nowhere near enough verging on practically and virtually nothing about that which poke fun and puns at.
I Kid U Not, and ask more than just The Register and El Regers ...... Is that where IT and AI and Humanity is all presently at?
This much I currently know and freely share about the situation for publishing ...... Proper Preparation and Positive Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance Permitting Prime Prize Plum Penetrations and Perfect Private Protocolled Pursuit of Public Parametered Projects and Pirate ProgramMING Productions for Pumping and Pimping in Presentations to Populations Puzzled by Progress and Prisonered with Pathetic Past Postings Profiling and Pioneering with Pilots Practised in Plush Promising Programs and Prolifically Painful Pogroms Promoting Pariah Personnel and Phantom Paths for Production of Premium Primacy in Petrifying Putrefaction
And another thing that is absolutely certain, is that you really have no clear idea how much further and deeper and darker such dark and enlightening matters have developed since at least Monday 13th November 2017 16:59 GMT in these Perilous Halcyon Days of 0Days that El Reg hosted a threading post on, advising leaders to not ignore as their reality ...... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2017/11/10/amber_rudd_ai_minority_report/#c_3345446 ..... and now thoroughly infests and invests in guaranteed failsafe success against any and all opposition and malevolent competition.
And here's even earlier Registered news of The New Hot Cold War Interface .... Sleeper Agents vs Toxic Asset Managers and the situation you now be quantum entangled to swim or drown in .... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2017/11/02/silence_trojan_bank_hacking_crew/#c_3336632
Have a Nice Day, Y'all ...... and prepare yourselves for more info on troubles ignored and now to be exposed denied the earlier oxygen of publication for remote virtual otherworldly remediation ‽
@Primus_Secundus_Tertius
Quote: "...If people were willing to pay upfront for internet services..."
Have you not noticed:
(1) Millions of people are paying a monthly fee for broadband on their smartphone?
(2) Netflix has millions of subscribers?
(3) Millions of people have been forced onto subscription-based applications (see Adobe for details)?
(4) ...and then there's "the cloud"....also a subscription deal?
Yes....people (millions of them) ARE willing!!
You didn't mention a subscription-based search engine. If there was an ad-free, reliable search engine that respected a few operators such as +, -, and, not, or, etc would people subscribe? It's probably a moot point because if someone tried to set one up the usual suspects would improve their game for a year or so and roll over it.
Adverts are for the cheap tier. Probably an offering to make up for them winding back on their utterly lackadaisical approach to password sharing in the past.
And it had better stay that way. If they start running adverts, I'm out. I like Netflix because I pays my money and I watches my video, simple. If I wanted to cough up coins and sit through endless adverts, I'd subscribe to Sky...
It's becoming fast a fascist state. So for one , the USA,.
They have been supporting apartheid and the treatment of Palestinians under Israel's boots
Plus they send them money for weapons to use against the Palestinians.
Take both countries out when it comes to the " free world " and " democracies " lists.
Netanyahu was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area today. All kinds of Jewish community leaders around here petitioned for an audience. He turned every one of them down. The one, single, solitary person he was here to visit with?
Elon fucking Musk.
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
...the internet would resemble a hi-res version of Prestel and access would be priced by the Mb, with extra fees for every site, service and app.
If it makes you guys feel so superior to block adverts, go ahead. Try not to do it when out with your family. Spare them that.
And be aware that your OS/software/VPN may have more back doors than a Chinese restaurant in a Hollywood movie. There have been loads of stories of state intervention on El Reg that could not have happened without that being the case. Join the dots. They don't use magic or the word on the street. So be careful what you surf for.
Sound advice that, Tron, ..... to be careful about what you do out there, anywhere and everywhere ..... for there really aint no hiding place nor any secret safe from that and those practised and expert and comfortable in leading virtual worlds hunting down evil and those no-gooders making lives down on Earth a constant struggle and just a few step away from unbearably hellish or manifestly unfair and designedly crooked and corrupt and perverse and subversive.
However, no matter what you may believe, or be told by A.N.Others to the contrary, no great care in any world is gonna prevent those particular and peculiar dots being joined up to present a guilty-as-sin picture for successful prosecution and perp conviction for crimes against humanity in the first degree .... ie with malice aforethought.
Have an upvote, Tron, for speaking truth unto the masses about those right dodgy, shady shadowy powers that be a blight and a blot on landscapes that HM Elizabeth 2 warned everyone about .....
The former royal butler Paul Burrell today claimed that the Queen had warned him that his close relationship with Princess Diana could put him in danger.In his first interview since being acquitted of stealing Diana's personal treasures, Mr Burrell said that the Queen had urged him to be vigilant. "There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge," he said she had told him. ..... https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/nov/06/constitution.monarchy1
Wake up, and smell the coffee, for surely you cannot help but suspect, if you don’t already know, that the rubicon is crossed and the status quo is virtually lost and practically right out of live ammo and is now reduced to firing off blanks that hold back nothing in the frays charging down the line to meet and greet them with crushing embraces and crashing tumbles.
Deny it at your leisure is a delusional pleasure, for Karma is a right righteous bitch that delivers a stealthy SWIFT kick to render all greater fools to a fate which any lesser fool and soft touch wouldn’t want to wish on their worst enemy. ........ How Far Are We From Revolution?
Whose side are you on, and rooting for to win win and not lose? Do they have a Great AIMaster Piloting Plan? They’re gonna need one. I Kid U Not.
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