
Government Spyware Vendor Left Customer, Victim Data Online for Everyone to See - mzs
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbka8b/wolf-intelligence-leak-customer-victim-data-online
======
mzs
[https://youtu.be/mT7q3Qqzlos](https://youtu.be/mT7q3Qqzlos)

>Wolf Intelligence, a Germany-based spyware company that made headlines for
sending a bodyguard to Mauritania and prompting an international incident
after the local government detained the bodyguard as collateral for a deal
went wrong, left a trove of its own data exposed online. The leak exposed 20
gigabytes of data, including recordings of meetings with customers, a scan of
a passport belonging to the company’s founder, scans of the founder’s credit
cards, and surveillance targets’ data, according to researchers.

…

>“Maybe they were thinking that the server was secure, I don't know, but it
was definitely stupid,” Kruse said. “Everything was just floating around on
the internet. That's why I thought this story was too good to be true.”

…

>“It’s very shitty and it’s just copy paste from open source projects,” …

~~~
CodeMage
> _detained the bodyguard as collateral for a deal went wrong_

As a non-native English speaker, I'm confused whether this should have been
"deal gone wrong" or "deal that went wrong", or whether it's a garden path
sentence that I'm just unable to parse correctly.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm a native speaker. I think it should be "deal gone wrong" (or "a deal that
went wrong" would work too).

FWIW.

I will add that I think they were trying to make "deal gone wrong" past tense
-- or even more past tense, since _gone_ is already past tense. I think they
were trying to indicate it was a prior event within the story line, not just
prior event in relation to people reading it now.

~~~
a3n
I see this kind of thing all the time, "even" in the NYT and similar first
tier news sources.

I assume that everything these days is written in one pass, and no one pays
for copy editors anymore. It also wouldn't surprise me if "words per month,"
based on how fast a professional is expect to be able to type, were part of
annual reviews, in keeping with the general corporate trend of abandoning
hard, personal, contextual reviews in favor of easy, no personal
responsibility "metrics."

But that's all a guess, I'm not in the industry. All I can say for sure is I
see it all the time.

"It passed spell check." ... "Ship it."

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm actually a freelance writer and blogger. Everything I have read indicates
that real wages are down industry-wide. Good writers used to get paid enough
to spends weeks or months on a single article. Now, they need to shovel it out
the door as fast as they can to keep themselves fed.

And, yeah, passing spell check leaves much to be desired. That isn't enough to
insure it is excellent writing.

I'm still wondering if I can ever develop an internet presence and Patreon
support (etc) with middle class or better pay for my brilliance. So far, I
still make peanuts, though there are confounding factors as to why, so I
haven't outright given up...yet.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _They also found data belonging to several victims in countries such as
> Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. One of the victims, they said, is a human
> rights defender._

How doesn't this violate any arms control regulations?

Is there really no law on the books in the U.S., U.K. or EU criminalizing
this? (Alternatively, do we need to press for new legislation or tighter
enforcement?)

~~~
boomboomsubban
They are presumably authorized to sell to foreign governments, and those are
allies that we have no issue selling weaponry to. Humans rights abuses are
only really a problem when you're and enemy to the US, we'd need a drastic
shift in foreign policy to change this.

------
sorokod
Shaming a criminal is useless, the relevant German government officials have
to take the blame and the consequences.

