Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Italy admits hacking activists with Israeli spyware Paragon (www.haaretz.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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An Italian parliamentary committee has confirmed that the government used the Israeli-made spyware Graphite, developed by the offensive cyber company Paragon, to hack the smartphones of several activists working with migrants.

The committee confirmed that Paragon provided Graphite to two Italian agencies, including the country's external intelligence service, starting in 2023. The version of Graphite provided did not include the ability to activate the phone's microphone or camera, the report said. Instead, it only enabled its operators access to encrypted communications on the hacked devices.

The report also confirmed that Graphite exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp that Meta identified and patched in December 2024, one month before the spyware's activity was publicly disclosed. The vulnerability's discovery also caused "panic" at Israel's military intelligence Unit 8200, according to the recent Israeli television report.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Reminds me of when the NSA was spying on Yahoo Video calls so they could do their early facial recognition training.

Since it was a platform mostly used for video sex, The NSA literally made a public statement saying they had a system to blur genitals and that they were "only" training facial recognition data.

My mind was fucking blown. Who cares if you film my dick? That doesn't let you identity me from the MacDonald's cameras you hacked into. The face data is what we were worried about.