Apple has abruptly withdrawn its lawsuit against NSO Group, citing increased risk that the legal battle might unintentionally reveal sensitive vulnerability data to the very adversaries involved in the legal dispute.
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I guess thatâs one way to become legally untouchable 
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Concerning, since technical-only solutions wonât thwart a nation state actor.
Google, on paper at least, has been locking up Android, which is routinely pwned by memory-related exploits, by replacing C/C++ with memory-safe Rust and private compute (ex: mutually untrusted VMs aka pKVM).
That alone wonât ever be enough, but will definitely make it expensive for CSVs (commercial surveillance vendors) like the NSO group to come up with zero-days.
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Good evening, I would be grateful if you would pay attention to my message.
Which set of measures do you think might be more productive?
Wouldnât a closed hearing at least partially resolve the issue?
I mean Is there a legal or procedural solution to the issue that Apple has identified as the reason for dropping the lawsuit?
The problem has both technical and legal dimensions and obtaining information from NSO Group is a challenging equation,
but Apple has the resources and determination to overcome this challenge, donât you think so?
How much untouchability costs? There will always be someone who will try to make them touchable. For (much) more money ofc
Apple canât risk going up against the military-industrial complex, I donât think. In fact, Iâd not be surprised if it itself is found to be a part of it.
Donât presume they need anything of the sort. Donât mean to sound grim or dramatic, but CSVs supply key tech to an immense powerbase (dictators, authoritarian head of states, far-right nationalists, over-reaching billionaires) that when put together rule most of the world.
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But do they have reasons to ?
Apple probably does this for PR, as all their talks about Privacy is MOSTLY marketing.
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There always is a reasonâŚ
There is enough tinfoil in here to bake a truck load of potatoes.
Apples reasoning here is straight forward, no need for conspiracies. Also the U.S. government views NSO as an adversary and malicious actor, hence the sanctions.
Why are Google not giving up? Hacking Policy Council
As another user mentioned, Apple is all about marketing.
Isnât stopping them (and it canât since their customer base is beyond USâ economic reach): State-backed attackers and commercial surveillance vendors repeatedly use the same exploits
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Thatâs why Apple ecosystem is treated as a âprivacy respectingâ alternative.
This made me chuckle quite a bit.
Google could potentially get into a lawsuit with the NSO or other CSVs and be in less of a bad spot because AOSP is an open system which they build upon for their phones and other services. Unless Google Play Services or some other closed source service in a device is used as an attack vector, Google have less to lose than Apple does.
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