Mossad, on the other hand, is a civilian intelligence service and I'm told there's a strong tradition that its members don't freelance their services after leaving.
"The Israeli Unit 8200 An OSINT-based study" https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/c...
"Most of this data is shared internally across the IDF (as well as sometimes externally, cf. 3.3 below) to the Unit’s relevant stakeholders, whether combat troops, decision-makers or other intelligence agencies such as Mossad. Or as Yair Cohen, who served 33 years in Unit 8200, the last five (2001–05) as its commander, put it, "90% of the intelligence material in Israel is coming from 8200 […] there isn't a major operation, from the Mossad or any intelligence security agency, that 8200 is not involved in"
>"...Mossad, on the other hand, is a civilian intelligence service and I'm told there's a strong tradition that its members don't freelance their services after leaving..."
Tradition is not what it used to be:
"Black Cube: The Bumbling Spies of the ‘Private Mossad’"
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/black-cube-the-bumbling-spi...
"...Despite some missteps, Black Cube “has to turn clients away because it cannot service all the demands,” said Mr. Halevy, a former head of the Mossad, an Israeli government intelligence agency. He said Black Cube has worked on 300 cases since being founded in 2010 by two former Israeli military intelligence officers, Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus..."
"Harvey Weinstein hired ex-Mossad agents to suppress allegations, report claims"
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/07/harvey-weinstei...
Intelligence services typically have less turnover. Though that is changing, particularly for NSA, where people leave to go to contractors.
Also, frankly, describing NSO as ex Mossad just makes phone malware sound much more complicated than it is and much harder to stop. At the end of the day, its software, written by people in much the same way any software is written. It just exploits mistakes other software devs made so that it can run.
emphasis on "military intelligence officers" i.e. not mossad. this is like mixing up the CIA and FBI. to an outsider they might appear the same, but that's not really the case.
https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-israel-black-cube2017110...
"Efraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, an Israeli intelligence service, is a member of Black Cube’s advisory board."
There's a reason why Russian malware software does not attack systems that have an RU locale for the keyboard: don't sh_t where you eat.
Of course if there are state-sponsored hackers (I'm not really aware if those exist, but I allow this possibility), they will target whatever their management points at. And with corruption it's pretty possible that some local business could be targeted as a part of some financial wars.
But majority of hackers are just some guys with some IT knowledge and zero morale. They'll buy some exploits and tools on black markets, duct tape them into something and release in the wild, waiting for profits (or police). They'll rob banks or babushkas, they don't care.
Which is a huge misconception outsiders have about this scene. They are Russian-speaking, not Russian, just like English speaking gangs are not necessarily English. These groups may (and often do) consist of nationals of different exUSSR countries, sometimes without even knowing each other personally. They might not even be a single group, just some individuals doing different parts of the scheme. (including "press releases" and "interviews" they sometimes do)
It has been the case long before all this ransomware fad. Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and partially Lithuania had world's top CC theft gangs for a couple decades, and they always been of mixed origin. They mostly steal EU and US cards because it offers better reward/risk ratio, compared to the home countries which are poor. But nothing stopped them from stealing CCs in Russia or Ukraine either, certainly not some mythical cops (who couldn't care less in reality); in fact, skimmers are widespread in those countries as well.
Ransomware groups are the same as CC thieves, it's just a different scheme; they probably avoid home countries for the same reason (same risk, less reward). The state can't possibly have too much influence on them, it just triggers the bullshit detector for anyone who lives in any former Soviet republic and knows about this stuff at least superficially.
Why wouldn't the Israeli government tolerate them? If anything, doesn't their government benefit from groups like this?
They get access to spy tools that they didn't have to use taxpayer money to fund, and because it's former members of their own intelligence working on it, they have some semblance of influence over how it's used.
Am I missing something?
Israel is only peripherally and reluctantly involved in the confrontations with Russia and China at the heart of 5E interests, and it neither trusts nor is trusted by 5E countries to the level of sharing intelligence sources or tools except in specific, transactional interactions.
American and Israeli politicians like to talk about Israel being America's "closest ally", but those are just pretty words. Israel's real selling point to the US is that it's a low-maintenance ally.
Hm, that's interesting. Israel seems to be the highest-maintenance ally the US has. Other than, perhaps, Pakistan.
I would say that Israel is politically necessary in the US, but they are expensive and prickly.
And I don't think I've ever seen the "closest ally" quote.
We surely inhabit different media worlds, but FWIW that's the perspective from this side. No arguments intended.
US troops have died in combat defending Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They've been killed by militants directly supported by Pakistani intelligence services.
How exactly is Israel "high maintenance" by those standards?
I think the US support of Israel comes from a different place, and I think Israel is a cantankerous partner. This may be by design, of course.
There is a legitimate argument that US aid to Israel isn't well thought out rationally, but the only reason that's plausible is that a few billion a year and low-cost diplomatic statements/votes aren't a big enough deal for the Serious National Security Considerations to come into play.
I think the hostility encountered by the US in the Middle East is entirely a function of protecting her own interests in a complicated and contested region. Maybe necessary, definitely inevitable.
The human suffering on all sides is a cost of doing business. This is deemed acceptable by the US govt and not contested by the hosting countries for various bad reasons. It is nothing more special than that. There is no grand righteous moral justification, but that is a useful fiction.
I apologize if this offends you, and I don't share it to be disrespectful -- just to explain my perspective.
If you're trying to describe the actual actions of the parties involved, morality is not a useful analytical or predictive tool; that comes into play when you yourself try to act.
Has the leak of NSA tools changed anything?
Yes. The bipartisan USA Freedom Act limited several aspects of the NSA's dragnet [1]. Amendments weakening the bill were defeated [2]. Less materially, a documentation requirement for § 702 searches of U.S. persons was added in 2018 [3].
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/usa-freedom-act-week-w...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/usa-freedom-act-passes...
[3] https://www.lawfareblog.com/summary-fisa-amendments-reauthor...
I mean when the CIA got busted not only spying on Congress a few years ago, but also lying about spying on Congress, they were told “don’t do that again please.”
Statute of limitations has expired, IIRC.
There's no such thing as ex-Mossad or ex-CIA or ex-KGB etc.
Apparently it's not Mossad but unit 8200, but I'd bet anything that nothing happen without their blessing.
I imagine it's similar for black/grey-hat software development.
I didn't get the connection between microwave and spying tools
So far, they have been tolerated by the Israeli government as they all went to the same schools, all did the armed forces service together, and all know each other. This allowed them to get a free pass so far. Privately, many of their ex-colleagues, are very critical of their lack of ethics.
All this will change, the day some of the NSO exploits will be used against Israel, the same way some of the NSA leaked tools are now used in the wild.