Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

The Polish Senate formed a special commission to investigate the government's use of Pegasus Spyware in the 2019 election and concluded shenanigans took place that were against the law.

From the article: "The commission also concluded that the Polish government used Pegasus to retaliate against opposition figures, and that these surveillance operations negatively influenced the 2019 elections in the country. The commission compared these abuses with Russian government hacker activities in the 2016 elections in the United States.

...

“It turns out that huge amounts of money,” Kamiński said, according to a machine translation, “are not spent in order to catch Russian agents, but in order to be interested in the life and views of Polish opposition politicians and influence the political process in Poland. This monstrous weapon was not used to protect citizens, but as our committee proved, it was used to persecute people who did not like the authorities.”

This is an excellent article as it highlights the use of Pegasus by autocratic regimes while NSO points to its use in Europe in a case of trying to whitewash the country saying that good guys use it.

It's spyware. Plain and simple. And you need to defend your equipment against it, especially if you're going to a country that's less than savory.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/polish-senate-says-use-of-government-spyware-is-illegal-in-the-country/

Polish spyware maker LetMeSpy made Android spyware that gave the installer pretty much a full copy of what was going on with the target phone: copies of text messages, call logs, real-time location data. It did require password access to the phone, and the software was almost impossible to detect and remove because there was no visible home screen icon.

They were hacked a couple of months ago, and the hackers - after removing the database containing the data the company had stolen - trashed their servers. LetMeSpy has thrown in the towel and is ceasing operations as of the end of the month.

Another interesting bit from the article: "A copy of the database was obtained by nonprofit transparency collective DDoSecrets, which indexes leaked datasets in the public interest, and shared with TechCrunch for analysis. The data showed that LetMeSpy, until recently, had been used to steal data from more than 13,000 compromised Android devices worldwide, though LetMeSpy’s website claimed prior to the breach that it controlled more than 236,000 devices."

I'm guessing either they did not have good backups of their operational and development data, or the PR light is too bright for them. Regardless, good riddance to bad rubbish.

This is the second spyware company that has shut down after reporting by Tech Crunch!

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/05/letmespy-spyware-shuts-down-wiped-server/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/08/07/2036229/spyware-maker-letmespy-shuts-down-after-hacker-deletes-server-data


I prefer iPhones over Android, and this is one reason. While they are not impervious to spyware, it's much harder for such software to take root. Not that I'm terribly concerned about being a target for such.