Lebanese army paid over 1M USD for spyware

You think this isnt part of "5as5asa".
As someone said there should have been a "mona2asa".
Too bad they have big money margin, while people die on the streets.

Is there any chance that this could be photoshopped?

@NuclearVision, no man this image is retrieved from the 400GB Torrent.

It's funny how the total is a round $100,000, it's as if someone came up with that number, then they filled the invoice with items to come up to that amount.

There are two invoices the other one is 100k usd for the equipement not the software itself.

I wonder how is this team allowed to sell such solutions.
I mean since usa for example already use it, shouldn't it as always stop others from reaching it.
Whats the point if every government use it, there will be no more secrets, thus no more spying, maybe only if it is local spying.
There's something fishy about the whole thing.
One more point, i don't think the army thinks of this as classified. i mean they could buy it as anonymous unless the team won't sell it to anonymous.

So they want to use this software to spy on our communication and eavesdrop on https transmission?
If so, this may be pointless because weaknesses in common encryption libraries (openssl, nss, etc...) are being fixed all the time.

samer wroteThat doesn't mean you can't take measures to defend yourself.

Can we spend a little more time thinking about this?

I watched this interesting talk by James Mickens this morning where he did touch on the topic of Security. (If you're interested, it starts at minute 16:18, but I recommend watching the whole thing anyway). He has a very simple way of describing his security model: Mossad or not Mossad, or to use a slightly less taboo word here, "NSA or not NSA", a pretty tongue-in-cheek way of saying "What can you really do if you're being targeted by government spying agencies?" To quote him:

These guys have all kinds of things you don't even have. They have drones, they have satellites intercepting communications and looking at them. You don't have a satellite. They have guys dropping out of helicopters, you don't even have a frisbee golf team. They have night vision goggles, they have guns that shoot around corners. That's a real thing! So I don't think that having a PGP signature in your email is going to protect you from that stuff.

I understand the cyberhacker cryptoanarchist fantasy of protecting yourself from your government by applying strong crypto, but you're standing against people who control your communication at every single stage. They control the ISPs connecting you to the Internet, the networking equipment relaying your messages, the authors of the application you're using for your messages, your own encryption software, ... They're not playing fair. As usual, I think xkcd says it best.

Again, the keyword here is targeted. Sure you can protect yourself from online blind fishing, but if powerful people want to intercept your communications, they generally will.

I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm not saying it's a bad thing either, but can we just drop the utopia of living in a world where we control our communication? That's similar to the infamous 2nd amendment controversy in the US where people think that they have the right to hold a gun to protect themselves from the tyranny of government or some bullshit. Government has squads of infantrymen armed to the teeth with bombs, missiles, drones, airplanes, tanks and bazookas and you think that your 2 shot shotgun will protect you from their tyranny??

Security is not a math problem, despite what "Security Researchers" will have you believe. Security is enforced by a 2m/130kgs henchman with an IQ below 70 and a 5$ wrench pounding on you until he gets the info he needs. and in the world we are living in, there's very little your math equations can do about it.

Further reads

• This World of Ours

@joe exactly.
All I keep hearing is this, I have the right to my privacy, I don't want anyone to know what I doing, to whom I'm talking, what am I talking about etc etc.
Like, don't worry, no one will go and willingly invade your privacy just to read your love letters and conversations between you and your girl.
Like I had this thought in my head from start, the government or federal people in every country, just like Joe said, they have control of your entire resources that you are using, your Internet, your mobile network, the applications you use etc etc, and I kept saying in my head, what's all this morning about privacy privacy, you can't do anything about it, if the government wants to find you, or stuff about you, they will.
But rest assured, they will not trace you because of your romance, or your late night horny sex video calls.
They will do that, If you have committed a serious crime.

I made a research on the decree cited in the "invoice", and I did fall on this:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+P-2009-1118+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

Indicating that this decree was found illegal by some instance in the EU administration so the said decree at least seems to exist and to have to do with taxation exemption.

It's all pretty lousy it smells dirty money, but staying on the point, that seems to substantiate somehow this story.

The text of the said decree can probably be found in Italian. I don't speak italian so I'll spare myself the torture :)

AVOlio wroteyour love letters and conversations between you and your girl.

I have naked photos of my girl. Do you think I want some random military guy seeing them?
How would you feel about it?

@rolf
I have naked pictures of me also.. and videos of me and my girl.
Yea, i dont want anyone to see them of course.

Seems that you and @eWizzard understood me wrong.
I dont have faith in them,never! You think i have faith in the lebanese military, or the government? HaaaH

My only point to prove is, they can access your private life if they want.
And you cant do anything to hide it.

AVOlio wrote My only point to prove is, they can access your private life if they want.
And you cant do anything to hide it.

I disagree. You can for example keep your pc updated and stuff like that.
I don't think there is a guarantee but it's not that easy to break into someone's computer.

AVOlio wrote@joe exactly.
All I keep hearing is this, I have the right to my privacy, I don't want anyone to know what I doing, to whom I'm talking, what am I talking about etc etc.

Are there any laws which clearly state that we have privacy or was it privacy limited by دواعي الامن القومي.
I think the government has the right to know who are we talking to, and what are we talking about, isn't that part of the compromise for security theory?