{"id":26767,"date":"2024-04-19T08:55:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T15:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=26767"},"modified":"2024-04-19T08:55:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T15:55:48","slug":"rise-commercial-spyware-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/rise-commercial-spyware-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of the Commercial Spyware Economy &amp; How to Tackle It Proactively"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2021, 50,000 phone numbers believed to be of interest to clients of the surveillance company NSO were leaked. They represented possible victims of its Pegasus software, revealing<a href=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/what-the-new-pegasus-spyware-leak-means-for-surveillance-smartphones-encryption-backdoors\/\"> the scale of the spyware problem<\/a>. NSO continues to face unwelcome scrutiny, but there have been no comparable high-profile revelations about this murky world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/what-is-spyware\/\">Spyware<\/a> has certainly not gone away.\u00a0 That\u2019s clear from a new report from Google\u2019s Threat Analysis Group, which documents the rise of <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/threat-analysis-group\/commercial-surveillance-vendors-google-tag-report\/\">a flourishing commercial spyware sector<\/a>. Although only a limited number of people have been directly affected, the knock-on consequences are huge, and impact millions of people:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Spyware vendors point to their tools\u2019 legitimate use in law enforcement and counterterrorism. However, spyware deployed against journalists, human rights defenders, dissidents, and opposition party politicians \u2014 what Google refers to as \u2018high risk users\u2019 \u2014 has been well documented, both by analysis from Google, and by researchers from organizations like the University of Toronto\u2019s Citizen Lab and Amnesty International. While the number of users targeted by spyware is small compared to other types of cyber threat activity, the follow-on effects are much broader. This type of focused targeting threatens freedom of speech, a free press, and the integrity of elections worldwide.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The report is valuable for the detail it provides of this new threat to privacy and beyond. For example, Google points out that big names like NSO may dominate the headlines, but that there are now dozens of smaller commercial surveillance vendors. Other less well-known names mentioned in the report include Cy4Gate, RCS Lab, Intellexa, Negg Group, and Variston. All of these companies work in broadly the same way, by finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in widely used software. Google breaks down the spyware ecosystem into four main groups:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Individual vulnerability researchers and exploit developers<\/strong> \u2013 one source for vulnerabilities is researchers who seek out flaws in common software\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Exploit brokers and suppliers<\/strong> \u2013 individuals or companies that specialize in selling vulnerabilities<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Commercial surveillance vendors<\/strong> \u2013 the players that develop and sell sophisticated spyware as a product, including delivery mechanisms, exploits, command and control structures, and associated tools<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Government customers<\/strong> \u2013 largely national authorities that buy commercial spyware software, to use against domestic or foreign targets they wish to monitor or attack<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Google report includes information about the pricing of these spyware products. For example, a \u201cpitch\u201d document for Nova spyware from Intellexa was published by the New York Times in December 2022:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>For \u20ac8 million [about $8.75 million] the customer receives the capability to use a remote one-click exploit chain to install spyware implants on Android and iOS devices, with the ability to run 10 concurrent spyware implants at any one time. In this example, while the spyware can only run on 10 different devices concurrently, it can be switched between devices or re-infect the same device for up to 100 infections.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What most of these spyware systems have in common is the frequent use of \u201czero-day exploits.\u201d\u00a0 These are vulnerabilities that were unknown previously, making it more or less impossible to defend against them: there is no security patch for them, and antivirus programs do not yet detect them. Google\u2019s Threat Analysis Group discovered 25 zero-days being actively exploited \u201cin the wild,\u201d \u2013 that is, in real-life situations \u2013 20 of which were being used by commercial spyware vendors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those zero-day exploits are not just a problem for individual, high-risk victims of spyware.\u00a0 They are routinely used by both national intelligence agencies and criminals against companies and governments. They can lead to the loss of considerable amounts of personal data, with major consequences for privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-how-to-tackle-vulnerabilities\">How to Tackle Vulnerabilities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This raises an interesting question: instead of just reacting to such powerful zero-day vulnerabilities after they emerge, is there some way to tackle them proactively in advance? That issue is addressed in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/oncd\/briefing-room\/2024\/02\/26\/press-release-technical-report\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">a new report<\/a> from the US Office of the National Cyber Director, called <em>Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software<\/em>. It suggests two key strategic approaches:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Reduce the attack surface in cyberspace that our adversaries can exploit by preventing entire classes of vulnerabilities from entering the digital ecosystem\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Anticipate systemic security risk by developing better diagnostics that measure cybersecurity quality<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More specifically, the report recommends that the creators of hardware and software should as a priority reduce vulnerabilities caused by programming errors when handling computer memory.\u00a0 These errors are a common source of zero-day vulnerabilities. This problem can be tackled using so-called <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/memory-safe-programming-languages\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">memory-safe<\/a> programming languages.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The report also suggests more should be done to develop ways of measuring the quality and security of software. This would allow organizations to find and address areas where there are vulnerabilities \u2013 either by eliminating them before they are exploited, finding them before they are used, or reducing their impact. This \u201csoftware metrology\u201d is one of the hardest research problems to address, the report says, but a greater effort needs to be made, the authors suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spyware may seem a rather specialized threat compared to more common forms of surveillance, but its ramifications are wide, especially in two key ways. First, because the consequences of spyware on crucial aspects of society such as freedom of speech, a free press, and fair elections are serious. Second, the rise of the spyware economy encourages the wider discovery and greater use of powerful software vulnerabilities that can be turned against anyone in a wide variety of contexts. That makes proposals like those of the Office of the National Cyber Director particularly welcome for the focus on reducing the problem of software vulnerabilities in advance, rather than simply trying to deal with their consequences afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2021, 50,000 phone numbers believed to be of interest to clients of the surveillance company NSO were leaked. They represented possible victims of its Pegasus software, revealing the scale of the spyware problem. NSO continues to face unwelcome scrutiny, but there have been no comparable high-profile revelations about this murky world. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":26435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":true,"_modified_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to Tackle the Rise of Commercial Spyware | PIA VPN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A leak of 50,000 phone numbers exposed the scale of NSO&#039;s Pegasus spyware. 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