Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in WANA

https://smex.org/invasive-israeli-software-is-harvesting-data-from-samsung-users-in-wana/

79•like_any_other•1h ago

Comments

FirmwareBurner•1h ago

Anyone know why it's always Israel with the mobile spyware?

orisho•1h ago

It's not just Israel. It's just not newsworthy if it's not Israel.

andy99•1h ago

Somehow "invasive Mountain View bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in the US" doesn't get the same attention.

amarcheschi•1h ago

I routinely see posts of various shitfuckeries in the home page of hn, mostly from big tech or other companies

dundarious•1h ago

It certainly has a valence if you're in Gaza, etc., and this software is typically found in phones in the region.

FirmwareBurner•1h ago

Which EU countries are comparable in militarized mobile spyware?

fakedang•1h ago

Ex Mossad, Shin Bet and Aman guys going into the private sector. In other countries, intelligence services people usually stay around for the long run. In Israel, most do it for a few years before moving to the private sector, and taking those talents with them. It's also the case with Russia and China - there's just more money for these guys in the private sector, while national service ensures they don't get treated any more exceptionally and obtain very little benefit for staying on.

fancyfredbot•1h ago

NSO group are a particularly successful Israeli spyware company, but there are others. For example Pars is Turkish.

markus_zhang•1h ago

Not sure, but they are really important in the Ads scene (yeah those ads). You got Ironsource and Applovin, both from IL. I think they are pretty talented in these things.

Barrin92•1h ago

you know what they said about Prussia, it's a military that happens to have a country attached to it, Israel is sort of like that but with an internet connection

sReinwald•1h ago

It's not always, but Israel is uniquely positioned for tech companies of this kind thanks to Unit 8200.

Israel has mandatory military service. They grab the most promising teenagers and give them insanely good cybersecurity training on the government's dime. They do their mandatory service, maybe spend a few more years in the unit, then move on to the private sector. Most, if not all, of Israel's tech companies in the cybersecurity/surveillance sector are related to Unit 8200 for this reason.

But also: I think it's fair to say that Israeli spyware gets more media attention party because of geopolitical factors. Similar to Russian or Chinese spyware. I doubt the same headline would catch as much attention if you swapped Israeli-founded with Spanish-founded.

bigyabai•1h ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20250920032034/https://smex.org/...

andy99•1h ago

This is from February

And the "Israeli founded" serves what purpose?

dismalaf•1h ago

> And the "Israeli founded" serves what purpose?

Stir up hate. Feed into conspiracy theories. Click bait. Etc...

andy99•1h ago

Yes my question was rhetorical, you can see how such suggestions get treated.

LightBug1•1h ago

Perhaps ... but that's only really possible, to any significant extent, to those who have already been primed to hate.

And, broadly speaking, people hate genocidal, terrorist nations.

CLPadvocate•49m ago

> And, broadly speaking, people hate genocidal, terrorist nations.

If that would be the case, the so-called Palestinians would long cease to exist.

LightBug1•39m ago

If you read that back to yourself, you'll understand (I hope) your logical failure and pitiful whataboutism.

My condolences regarding your predicament.

like_any_other•1h ago

Middle easterners probably want to know. I'm sure you can appreciate how that's relevant to their politics [1]. Would you have preferred the author had decided for his readers what information they should be interested in?

[1] Iranian state media warns Israel using cell phone tracking to assassinate leaders in Iran - report - https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-85806...

dismalaf•1h ago

It's literally their own governments who buy the software to spy on them.

In the Islamic world, governments privately have relations with Israel and publicly condemn them to keep the populace distracted.

Apart from Iran, who of course are straight up hostile to most everyone except Russia.

like_any_other•1h ago

> It's literally their own governments who buy the software to spy on them.

I couldn't find any source on who paid Samsung to preinstall this software - Samsung is very tight-lipped about it. I'd be very interested if you have one.

andy99•1h ago

> Would you have preferred the author had decided for his readers what information they should be interested in?

I don't understand the implication here, but yes?

Broader point, nationalistic click/flamebait shouldn't be on HN.

ddxv•1h ago

The company that has the most reach in mobile spyware is AppsFlyer which is Israeli owned and as yet a private company.

They operate in a closed space called mobile attribution of which only a few companies are competitors. Appsflyer is by far the largest. https://appgoblin.info/companies/types/ad-attribution

They are probably in 20 or more apps on your phone. https://appgoblin.com/companies/appsflyer.com

markus_zhang•1h ago

Every app uses Appsflyer. I worked for multiple companies and somehow they all use it. Kinda the standard in the industry.

Better drop back to a dumb phone TBH.

aeon_ai•1h ago

Israeli-founded very much buries the lede of US owned (ironSource/Unity).

dang•1h ago

A more recent article was discussed here:

Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44334167 - June 2025 (480 comments)

OutOfHere•38m ago

I figure Samsung too is fully on the do-not-use list now after all.

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Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in WANA

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