fast company “The deadly effects of Pegasus and other cyberweapons used by governments from Spain to Saudi Arabia against human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, and others have been well-documented. “The waves are helping to expose clandestine pseudo-weapons.” -The legal industry is behind these tools, putting a financial burden on companies like Israel's NSO Group, which is developing Pegasus.
“Still, business is booming.”
New research released this month by Google and Meta shows that despite new regulations, the cyberattack market is growing and becoming more dangerous, fueling government violence and repression around the world and promoting democracy. It is eroding principles.
“The industry is thriving,” says Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which hunts zero-day exploits (software bugs that have yet to be fixed and are potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to spyware sellers). says researcher Maddie Stone. “More companies continue to emerge, and government customers are determined to buy from them, and they want and are using these capabilities,” Google's Stone said. A report released by the team this month reveals for the first time that half of all known zero-day attacks against Google and Android products come from private companies. In addition to high-profile companies such as NSO and Candiru, Google researchers say they are tracking about 40 companies involved in developing hacking tools deployed against “high-risk individuals.” .
Of the 72 zero-day exploits we discovered in the wild between 2014 and last year, 35 were from these companies and other industry players, rather than state-sponsored actors. “The days of government monopoly over the most sophisticated functions are surely over,” the report says.
Google's findings, and a spyware-focused threat report released by Meta a week later, reflect an increasingly harsh response from Big Tech companies to industries that profit from infiltrating their systems. The report also put fresh pressure on the United States and others to take action against the largely unregulated industry.
“Google describes in its report a 'growing number of turnkey spying solutions' offered by dozens of shady companies…”
Thanks to Slashdot reader tedlistens for sharing the article.
