Paragon accidentally uploaded a photo of its spyware control panel
90 points
2 hours ago
| 7 comments
| twitter.com
| HN
ronsor
1 hour ago
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From one Twitter user:

> It's just a demo instance, but, these front ends are barely revealed to the public

This genuinely doesn't look any different from the control panels of commercial infostealers and RATs sold on Russian hacking forums. Those usually sell for between $200 and $20,000 depending on features and pricing model (one-time vs. ongoing subscription).

These spyware companies hype themselves up, but they're really not any different from Ivan's RAT-as-a-Service, besides having extra exploits to burn and wealthier customers.

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walletdrainer
50 minutes ago
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As it turns out, you just can’t make malware for targets like these much better.
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recursivecaveat
2 hours ago
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This company btw for anyone else who had not heard of them before (there are a lot of companies by that name): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragon_Solutions
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phendrenad2
1 hour ago
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It's too bad that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" has become "we can download a full copy of all of your files at any time, or continually, if we feel like it, even if we don't suspect you of a crime".
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phendrenad2
1 hour ago
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efilife
32 minutes ago
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Can somebody please explain to an idiot (me) how is this possible for this to keep going? I thought that the world has decided that spyware is illegal and can't be produced. Is this company related to israeli government? If not, why is it allowed to function?
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rtaylorgarlock
1 hour ago
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Looks like image was removed and maybe only a demo?
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moralestapia
1 hour ago
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Awesome.

Moxie's "unbreakable" end-to-end communication protocol.

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thmsths
1 hour ago
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The message can't be intercepted in transit, since we are talking about spyware, I assume they get it from the device, hard to defend against that if they have access to your process' memory space.
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lmm
28 minutes ago
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Certainly very hard to defend against that when the messenger you're using won't let you use a device you control.
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Hamuko
1 hour ago
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Surprising that end-to-end encryption doesn't really matter when you get into one of the ends.
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ASalazarMX
1 hour ago
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Even if you had to input your private key every time you wanted to read or send a message, having malware in your phone voids practically any form of encryption, because it has to be decrypted eventually to be used.
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akimbostrawman
1 hour ago
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not at all. there is no encryption that can save you when one of the legitimate participants is somehow compromised. doesn't even need to be a sophisticated device compromise, literal shoulder surfing does that too.
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moralestapia
1 hour ago
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>The message can't be intercepted in transit

Lol, so like ... all encryption schemes since the 70s?

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sowbug
1 hour ago
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They do have stronger schemes, which are called hash functions.
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moralestapia
1 hour ago
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What?

Hashing is not encrypting.

You can learn more about the topic here, https://www.okta.com/identity-101/hashing-vs-encryption/

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coldtea
30 minutes ago
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It's a joke, because hashing losses information, and thus the original is not retrievable, woosh
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p-o
1 hour ago
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Hashing is a part of encryption, maybe you are the one who needs to shore up on the topic?
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aipatselarom
1 hour ago
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Nice try. However, hashing and encryption are two different operations.

Load this page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard

Ctrl-F "hash". No mention of it.

Before being pedantic at least check out the url in that comment to get the basics going.

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sowbug
23 minutes ago
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This entire thread should be annihilated, but since you mentioned being pedantic...

You're correct that a pure encryption algorithm doesn't use hashing. But real-world encryption systems will include an HMAC to detect whether messages were altered in transit. HMACs do use hash functions.

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AlotOfReading
27 minutes ago
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A good hash function is surjective. Encryption is bijective. They're very different things.
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sowbug
1 hour ago
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> What?

> Hashing is not encrypting.

> You can learn more about the topic here, https://www.okta.com/identity-101/hashing-vs-encryption/

Thank you for that link. Your original comment implied that Signal's threat model should have included an attacker-controlled end. The only way to do that is to make decryption impossible by anyone, including the intended recipient. A labyrinthine way to do that would be to substitute the symmetric-encryption algorithm with a hash algorithm, which of course destroys the plaintext, but does accomplish the goal of obfuscating it in transit, at rest, and forever.

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Insanity
1 hour ago
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How is this related?
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moralestapia
1 hour ago
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I see there's some room for ambiguity.

See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike

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Insanity
8 minutes ago
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Yea I knew which Moxie it was but that didn’t help at all haha
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dualbus
36 minutes ago
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Apologies for being dense. Could you spell out how you went from Paragon Solutions to the Signal Protocol?
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ale42
18 minutes ago
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I guess they've seen a Signal icon in the photo. Of course the interception is done locally on the phone (so it's basically "man-in-the-client" rather than a "man-in-the-middle"), therefore the Signal protocol is not really worth being mentioned as it has nothing to do with local interception.
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amai
43 minutes ago
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I read Pentagon instead of Paragon.
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