Paragon Solutions Spyware: Graphite

Paragon Solutions is yet another Israeli spyware company. Their product is called “Graphite,” and is a lot like NSO Group’s Pegasus. And Paragon is working with what seems to be US approval:

American approval, even if indirect, has been at the heart of Paragon’s strategy. The company sought a list of allied nations that the US wouldn’t object to seeing deploy Graphite. People with knowledge of the matter suggested 35 countries are on that list, though the exact nations involved could not be determined. Most were in the EU and some in Asia, the people said.

Remember when NSO Group was banned in the US a year and a half ago? The Drug Enforcement Agency uses Graphite.

We’re never going to reduce the power of these cyberweapons arms merchants by going after them one by one. We need to deal with the whole industry. And we’re not going to do it as long as the democracies of the world use their products as well.

Tags: Israel, national security policy, spyware

Posted on June 8, 2023 at 7:30 AM • 26 Comments

Comments

Clive Robinson • June 8, 2023 7:48 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Re : In name only.

“And we’re not going to do it as long as the democracies of the world use their products as well.”

But we do not live in actual democracies. But a “fools paradise” of “Representatives” we do not chose from which we are forced to select one.

Those representatives are chosen by those we have no control over and those doing the chosing have no intention of alowing us to derail their rigged game due to the profit, status, power and ultimately control it gives them.

Thus to get rid of such surveillance we should ask,

“How do we get rid of the control?”

Then we might stand a chance.

yet another bruce • June 8, 2023 8:13 AM

@Clive You are indeed full of surprises

Since we are talking revolution, let me propose that our Peoples’ Utopia be governed by direct democracy with proxy.

The idea is legislation is ratified by a vote of all citizens but most citizens don’t have time for all that and give their proxy to a policy professional. The proxy can be specific to a particular topic so I could give Bruce my proxy for artificial intelligence and internet security and Elizabeth Warren my proxy for banking regulation.

There are no elections. Proxies can be reassigned at any time for any reason. Proxy holders get a stipend proportional to the votes they cast.

JonKnowsNothing • June 8, 2023 10:25 AM

@yet another bruce, @Clive, All

re:governed by direct democracy with proxy.

It’s called The Tyranny of the Majority.

The USA has Winner Take All system. Other countries run Proportional Schemes. Northern Ireland has a pretty convoluted Proportional version, but seems to be holding together for them.

Anytime we rely on Majority, it means ignoring or omitting the Minority or Those Opposed. Sometimes we give a fig-leaf to the Minority views but once you have the Majority, you don’t really need to do much.

However, after a while the Minority gets pretty darned tired of being stomped on, and begins to make more dire rumblings. That’s when things go pear-shaped PDQ.

There isn’t much in direct interest to the Majority to avoid this condition, the

Après moi, le déluge

form of ignoring the rotting roofs, the peeling wallpaper, rising damp in a society.

Best Quote of the Week goes to the Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe:

If people can cut back spending, or in some cases find additional
hours of work, that would put them back into a positive cash flow
position.

RBA governor Philip Lowe
06 07 2023

Winter • June 8, 2023 10:47 AM

@JonKnowsNothing

It’s called The Tyranny of the Majority.

In practice, the “Tyranny of the Majority” is in reality most often a “Tyranny of the Minority” where the majority in parliament has only a minority of the actual votes, and many people are “dissuaded” from voting.

Many democracies have pretty good safeguards against the “Tyranny of the Majority”. Mostly independent judiciary, pretty strong rights of protest, strong protection of the media landscape diversity [1], and most importantly, electoral systems that enforce that the majority in parliament also has a majority of the votes, and everyone can indeed easily vote.

But the best protection seems to be the reality of coalition governments, especially, varying coalitions. In politics, Compromise is a indispensable Virtue.

In contrast to democracies, all non-Democratic systems are “Tyrannies of the Minority”. Not exactly a better option.

[1] I once was in a discussion over dinner with an international group. When talking about newspapers, a Polish participant said she did not trust newspapers because they were pro-government when their party was in power and anti-government when not. At this a Finnish participant and I said we only read newspapers that were always critical of the government, irrespective of the party in power.

JonKnowsNothing • June 8, 2023 11:26 AM

@Winter; All

re:

W: I once was in a discussion over dinner with an international group. When talking about newspapers, a Polish participant said she did not trust newspapers because they were pro-government when their party was in power and anti-government when not. At this a Finnish participant and I said we only read newspapers that were always critical of the government, irrespective of the party in power.

I had a somewhat similar conversation with ranchers that were moving out of California.

They said they were tired of not getting things-laws they voted for in all their years of voting.

I laughed and pointed out, that I am of the opposite political party, and I never got the things I voted for either.

They looked at me perplexed, because they assumed that whatever I voted for, since it was not what they voted for, got accepted. Hardly ever, I pointed out.

It all depends on where you live, in a fashion. Farming areas tend to be conservative economic views especially if you are the rancher or land owner. In more urban areas and along the coast lines, things tend to be more socially progressive, with the exceptions now of Mega$$Bros who buy up entire cities so they won’t have neighbors. If you don’t have neighbors, you don’t have to worry about those people voting against your personal interests.

A MSM article shows how tricky this can get

A retired British stockbroker bought a second home in a charming village in France. He spent a lot of money getting “deals” from the small village government, so he could fix up his spot and also rent it out.

One of the locals, a neighbor, was Not Amused, that the wealthy Brit had managed to gain ownership of an ancient right of way between their two properties.

The wealthy Brit is upset. His neighbor drives along their common, or not common fence line, leaning on the horn of his ATV.

The story is in an UK edition of a MSM news organization. It is meant to make you feel sorry for the wealthy retired Brit, living a few months out of the year in idyllic France.

From many other similar situations, in the USA, I in no way feel sorry for this person. I side with the farmer, rancher, grower.

===

HAIL warning

ht tps://www.theguardian.c o m/world/2023/jun/07/briton-roderick-sinclair-harassment-french-bridle-path-dispute-montjoi

(url factured)

iAPX • June 8, 2023 11:59 AM

As much as I appreciate the utopia of Democracy, everyone being treated and considered equally with theoretically same power over their representatives, I don’t know any system where it’s efficient.

It seems to work when there’s a lot of growth and for the best of the pack, but not in other conditions, and anyway it doesn’t seem to benefit everyone at the same level…

What is observable on any highly-competitive domain is not democracy, and for a good reason!

Winter • June 8, 2023 12:17 PM

@iAPX

I don’t know any system where it’s efficient.

What do you mean with “efficient”?

Some of the wealthiest countries of the world are democratic, e.g., Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland. They are at the top of any ranking of freedom, security, education, health, and happiness.

Also, they are pretty good in distributing the benefits. Gini coefficients (after taxes) are well below USA and UK. Social mobility is at the top of the list.

So, what is inefficient there?

iAPX • June 8, 2023 12:35 PM

@Winter

These countries are democracies because they could afford it by being at the top ranking, not the other way around.
That was my point on “best of the pack”.

Elections themselves are only there to select the best person or group to be elected, but there’s nothing that warranty any result thereafter, not even goodwill.

That’s not to say that I think another system is better, this is a criticism of pure democracy per-se. And there’s no pure democracy.

John Tillotson • June 8, 2023 1:16 PM

The only thing worse than an inefficient government is an efficient government.

Consider the type of person who runs for office and how corrupt are many bureaucracies and elected officials. I’d rather they be inefficient and unable to implement their greedy and nefarious plans.

It’s the same when Justin Trudeau goes on vacation here in Canada: People complain that he’s not at work, but I cheer the fact that he’s taking a break from raising taxes, breaking up Canada, and selling what’s left of Canada to the PRC.

JonKnowsNothing • June 8, 2023 2:06 PM

@John Tillotson, Winter, Clive, All

re: Consider the type of person who runs for office and how corrupt are many bureaucracies and elected officials.

Corollary 1:

Consider the type of person who is appointed to office and how corrupt are many bureaucracies and elected officials.

How would we ever be able to deal with issues like spyware, regardless of which state is using it or which commercial enterprise is employing it, when we have RL examples of the mentality that governs the usage.

On the 10th Anniversary of ES revelations, a MSM report had quotes from Ret General M. Hayden on the topic of ES. I would never suggest anyone attempt to debate or exchange views with M. Hayden as he has extensive experience in logic games and misdirection. He is a very smart man and he knows how to re-frame or double down on a topic.

So after 10yrs he is still pedaling the NSA, CIA, FBI narratives.

NSA “lost a lot of collection”
He [ES] went to Hong Kong and then went to Russia. What do you think about that?

These are not untrue statements, however they are Loaded Statements and Loaded Questions.

===

HAIL Date Warning

ht tps://www.theguardian.c o m/us-news/2023/jun/07/edward-snowden-10-years-surveillance-revelations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).

Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner’s agenda.

(url fractured)

Ted • June 8, 2023 2:16 PM

From a 9to5Mac article: “Hopefully Apple’s alerts will work for this spyware too.”

Are phone providers going to weigh in on this?

Winter • June 8, 2023 3:06 PM

@iAPX

These countries are democracies because they could afford it by being at the top ranking, not the other way around.

All left the 19th century very poor and worked themselves up to great wealth without the benefits (or curses) of mineral riches. All education and hard work. And they became democracies before they became rich.

Winter • June 8, 2023 3:45 PM

@John Tillotson

The only thing worse than an inefficient government is an efficient government.

You obviously have never lived under an inefficiënt government. Go visit Uganda, Russia, Belarus, Indonesia or any of the wide choice of countries with inefficiënt governments.

People die much younger in such countries. And they do so for a reason.

Nimmo • June 8, 2023 5:11 PM

lol that implies that the ammurrican empire, which has murdered more than 300 million people in its history of infamy, is a ‘democracy’, and that its filthy puppets are ‘democracies’.

(They aren’t)

vas pup • June 8, 2023 5:40 PM

Israeli-founded cyber unicorn Snyk buys local application security startup

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-founded-cyber-unicorn-snyk-buys-local-
application-security-startup/

“US-based cybersecurity startup Snyk, founded by Israeli entrepreneurs, said it is buying Tel Aviv-based startup Enso Security to bolster its developer security platform for software applications.

!!!With the fast adoption of AI enabling developers to introduce code faster, Snyk says it is more difficult than ever for developers and application security professionals to identify and prioritize risks to their business. In this complex environment, application security teams need a toolkit for better visibility to find and fix security issues.

Snyk chief product officer Manoj Nair said the integration of Enso’s platform into its security solutions will help “enterprises achieve greater supply chain security transparency, =>allowing them to eliminate crucial security coverage gaps across their business.”

=>Enso has built a so-called application security posture management (ASPM) platform, that the startup says provides a unified way businesses and organizations manage and operate security threats and vulnerabilities to their software applications. The Tel Aviv-based startup in October 2020 raised $6 million in seed funding, led by YL Ventures. Other investors in the startup include Jump Capital, Cyberark Ventures and
Merlin Ventures.

By 2026, over 40% of businesses and organizations developing software applications are expected to adopt ASPM to more rapidly identify and resolve security issues, according to a Gartner report.

Last month, US tech giant IBM acquired Israeli cyber startup Polar Security, a
developer of an automated data security platform to track and protect sensitive data across hybrid cloud-based systems.”

Clive Robinson • June 9, 2023 12:10 AM

@ yet another bruce, ALL,

Re : Democratic Utopia.

“Since we are talking revolution, let me propose that our Peoples’ Utopia be governed by direct democracy with proxy.”

We’ve known for quite some time what is seen as openly given with one hand, is fiercely and controlingly grasped with the other hidden behind “rules for your own protection”.

Ross J. Anderson called it “Democracy theater” after our hosts “Security theater” naming scheme,

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/03/29/commentary-on-facebooks-terms-of-service/

Power rarely behaves honestly even when faced by not just revolution but near total annihilation. Power always believes it can win because good and honest people have no taste to do what is required to stop it… which is become what is so detestd.

Thus as those in power know from history, good people will vacillate, and prevaricate to avoid taking any responsability. Worse they know good people will also sleep walk into a cage, then most will willingly follow a judas goat into the slaughter house bleating as they go. The trick for those in power is to turn the heat up slowly through a status loving proxie. If the proxie turns it up to quickly it is the proxie that gets hung from a lamppost. Whilst those behind them slip into the shadows for a while to come back as “humble servants” to the next proxie.

Winter • June 9, 2023 1:25 AM

@nimmo

(They aren’t)

So what is a “Democracy”, according to you?

And do such states exist?

And if not, how do we distinguish between different forms of non-democracies? Some are obviously less popular by their inhabitants than others.

And if democracies do not exist, how to explain the fact that there are quite a number of countries that are populated by a majority that are very content with the political system as it is?

Personally, I use Popper’s definition of a democracy:

A system where the people can and do send their government home peacefully when they don’t want them anymore.

Coleen • June 9, 2023 10:52 AM

@ Clive Robinson • June 8, 2023 7:48 AM

Re “we do not live in actual democracies”

You are right, of course. Yet many others here are still in denial of this actual reality.

Any alleged expert or layperson who talks about “democracies” AS IF a real democracy ACTUALLY EXISTS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (or has existed at any time in ‘human civilization’) is evidently repeating mindlessly and blindly the propaganda fed to them since they were a kid and/or is part of the (unconscious, ignorant, naive, willful) crowd who disseminates this total lie because any “democracy” of ‘human civilization’ has always been a covert structure of the rule of a few over the many operating behind the pretense name and facade of a “democracy”: http://www.CovidTruthBeKnown.com (or https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html)

“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. […]. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies […]. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business […].” — from the 1976 movie “Network”

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice

In terms of “experts” or “awake” folks who sell you the fake program of democracies…

“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance.” —Guy Debord

Isn’t it about time for anyone to wake up to the ULTIMATE DEPTH of the human rabbit hole — rather than remain blissfully willfully ignorant in a narcissistic fantasy land and play victim like a little child?

“We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” —William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime

“Separate what you know from what you THINK you know.” — Unknown

Winter • June 9, 2023 11:04 AM

@Moderator

comment-422838 Coleen • June 9, 2023 10:52 AM

Propagating conspiracy theories. Propagating COVID misinformation and conspiracies.

iAPX • June 9, 2023 12:26 PM

@Coleen, @Winter, @Moderator

It seems that links purposing to put Vitamin C has been dubbed as “conspiracy theories” while these linked contents were backed to links to useful studies.
(sorry for my english, my third language, so I’m unsure of how to phrase it)

Is it now that Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc, and some others are on the side of “conspiracy theories” while on the other hands being backed by serious studies showing everyone are helping our immune system, and very serious and strong medical societies are backing them?

Or it is that at any point we couldn’t question actual science answers?
I understand, earth was unquestionably plate until it wasn’t, and now a geoid.

Aren’t we able to question things, to question Science?
Scepticism is now “conspiracist”, so the truth is absolutely known today while it wasn’t milleniums ago?

Winter • June 9, 2023 1:19 PM

@iAPX
One link equated COVID policies to historical genocide.

Winter • June 9, 2023 1:38 PM

@iAPX

Scepticism is now “conspiracist”, so the truth is absolutely known today while it wasn’t milleniums ago?

No, but writing about the agent “that’s putatively causing the Covid-19 malady” does not bolster trust in one’s grasp of medical science. Also, putting up vitamins as a cure for an ailment when you have no actual (empirical) test data about effectivity is considered malpractice in medical circles.

There is a difference between “scepticism” and “quackery”. The former is healthy, the latter is lethal.

iAPX • June 9, 2023 2:31 PM

@Winter

If you had evidences that point in other directions, or that totally contradict what have been put here, why not to put it to prove your point, at least temporarily until further discoveries?

What I witnesses is someone crying fool to another one, because “we know” (and we don’t know and I don’t know). Galileo, Pythagoras, and many others have been calling fools. That’s not the way science work.

Put your evidences on the table, show us!
From my point-of-view vitamin C helps combat nearly anything, as well as vitamin D or Zinc, and in fact with new CDC definition, the newspeak of 2023, vitamin C is a vaccine: “A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

Newspeak is always fun…

Winter • June 9, 2023 2:59 PM

@iAPX

If you had evidences that point in other directions, or that totally contradict what have been put here,

Anyone who claims to have a cure for an ailment must prove that it is safe and effective. The burden of proof is with the claim of the cure not with those who ask for evidence.

There are situations where vitamin supplements can help. But to claim high doses of vitamins cure or prevent viral infections is a extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. As the author in question has no evidence for the viral disease, the claim is nothing but quackery.

Winter • June 9, 2023 3:15 PM

@iAPX
Re: Coleen

To recapitulate, the comment in question claimed:

Public health policy is genocidal and equated with the attempted genocides during WWII
A viral cause of COVID is questioned
An untested cure for COVID is advocated without empirical evidence for this disease
The comment contains insults and slander against state employees

In summary, why is this comment not problematic given the commenting rules?

Irrational Ape • June 10, 2023 6:59 PM

How does a blog post about commercial/ government sponsored spyware manufacturers end up discussing merits of vitamins?

Schneier on Security

Paragon Solutions Spyware: Graphite

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