A bill that would allow police in France to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphone including GPS of their phones has been passed.

  • cygnus_velum@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How is this even feasible on Android or iPhones? Are they going to force everyone to download Team Viewer or something?

        • virgo@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Well crap, we’re fucked then?

          Title then link

          We are just as fucked as we’ve always been. Hackers use zero-day vulnerabilities. Can’t do too much about that. Any device is hackable. That became clear after Snowden, and the USA hacking irans centrifuge.

          • Gray@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            The US hacking Iran’s centrifuges would have been preventable though with careful device management as far as I understand. The worm they used, Stuxnet, didn’t come from nowhere. It either came from a USB that hadn’t been properly sanitized or their systems were connected to an external, unprotected network when they definitely should have been isolated. That’s a preventable virus and unrelated to conversations about backdoors being built into technology for governments to access.

            • virgo@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago

              We dropped a USB stick in the parking lot and they plugged the virus into the system lol

            • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I don’t know that part would have made much difference, they were already air gapped and the NSA probably could have figured out just about any centrifuge: The hard part was delivering the payload, which was apparently delivered via a rubber ducky left in a parking lot.

        • dontblink@feddit.it
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          1 year ago

          Can’t we even avoid that by using lineage or graphene? We’re really fucked unless we are like cybersec experts…

      • IAccidentallyCame@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Wonder if Google, Apple, or SoC makera are asked or secretly mandated to leave certain backdoors in. I know mobile providers have quite a bit they can see on their end.

        It’s a good thing we’re always presented with two choices for everything, like mobile OS’s, to control our choices like we’re toddlers.

        • CookieJarObserver@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          They don’t really need to, the company making Pegasus is very very skilled, they however get paid for that as well, its absolutely not worth it for a normal person usually.

        • eleitl@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Mobile operators have baseband which is why we have modem isolation. And some of us can see quite a bit on our end, too.

      • eleitl@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        How do you get Pegasus onto LineageOS or GrapheneOS? Especially on hardware with modem isolation?

        • vtez44@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          On lineageos also just pegasus. Only thing that makes it better than stock android is that you have more chances for security patches. Dumno about graphene, it has some additional protections, but still susceptible to some vulnerabilities of android.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Everyone causally saying the government can just do it with Pegasus is ignoring the fact that Pegasus itself is an exploit. It is a hack, to breach your personal device. If I used the same methods to get into a bank’s systems it would be a violation of the law. Same if I created this software and gave it to you for the same purpose. Ask yourselves why it would be permissible to sell this software then commercially? And, why is it permissible for the government to use it to hack your own devices. Let’s not just brush over this discussion like it’s nothing.

      • _wintermute@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nobody ignores the fact that government is doing something illegal when the conversation about their rampant spying happens. You may just be late to the party. We all know it’s illegal, unethical, and immoral. It basically comes down to this:

        What are you going to do about it?

        We’re living in objectively dystopian times. Our government does illegal shit literally all the time and gets away with it.

        • Spzi@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          What are you going to do about it?

          The very least people can do is talk about it and acknowledge it’s bad.

          Acceptance and normalization support the other side.

          • _wintermute@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            My generation has talked it to death. It’s pretty agreed upon that we’re being fucked and have very little power to stop it. Eventually you don’t have time to rehash all the heinous shit that happens because you realize there’s a constant deluge of it. Has nothing to do with “supporting the other side” lol. If reality has got you feeling insane, well, you’re on the right track.

                • wtfeweguys@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Tangential quote: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. -JFK

                  The fact that things are the way they are by design makes it harder for us to overcome them, but it should also make it abundantly clear it’s on us to do so.

                  I empathize with the feeling of powerlessness. And I encourage reaching past that from time to time to see where action is already taking place that only requires the slightest nudge from you to boost. Many hands make light work when those hands are pushing/pulling in the same direction.

    • Spiracle@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      While this news article is, apparently, not trustworthy, in general, France could demand every phone sold in the country include some kind of spyware. Many sellers already add a lot of programs by default anyway, so this would be how I image it might be implemented.

      Given that 7 people were recently arrested for using privacy respecting tools like the Signal messenger and Protonmail, removing that bloatware/spyware might then be cause enough to arrest you. After all, only terrorists want to have privacy, right?