Filed under: Well of course they did

[billy.pilgrim]

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/t ... advocates/

"An Israeli hacking-for-hire firm has helped government clients spy on more than 100 victims around the world including politicians, dissidents, human rights activists, embassy workers and journalists, according to a Microsoft report.

The firm, which goes by the name Candiru, is part of a burgeoning industry of largely unregulated spyware companies that sell snooping technology to government intelligence services and law enforcement agencies — often with questionable human rights records.

Candiru has likely sold spying tools to governments in the Middle East and Asia, according to the cybersecurity research group Citizen Lab, which identified people targeted by Candiru’s malicious software and helped Microsoft compile its report. Those governments then use the spying tools independently.

The report comes amid roiling concern about the proliferation of cyber weapons once limited to a handful of nations that are now becoming far more widespread. In addition to helping authoritarian regimes spy on dissidents and adversaries, that growth has enabled a wave of criminal hacks, including ransomware campaigns that have disrupted U.S. oil supplies and meat production."

[neoplacebo]

Most of this cyber attack stuff originates in Hackensack, NJ. But if you don't have your shit connected to the internet you can't be hacked or sacked. And if that oil company had hired actual people to open and close valves and monitor their pipelines they wouldn't have had to pay to get back to a situation in which they can be victimized again. I seriously doubt anyone has informed them of this. I won't.