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there are many if these companies and toolkits. too many to mention. more than 150 countries spend over 10M a year on _offensive_ cyber. generally making use o

there are many if these companies and toolkits. too many to mention. more than 150 countries spend over 10M a year on _offensive_ cyber. generally making use of such toolkits if they lack inhouse capabilities, which is pretty much all of those countries because the people creating the capabilities will refuse to work for them, so they can sell their tools.

exceptione 14d ago
Yup, but here is the rub: you and me can't buy the real stuff. You have to be a professional law breaker, which means you are in organized crime (don't forget the white collar guys), or you are working for Intelligence, in whatever capacity, in whatever oversight. The problem is that for offensive surveillance organizations the line between crime and work gets blurred quickly. That is why I am not too enthusiastic that our Dutch intelligence agency will receive offensive capabilities as well. Information is power, and you will soon end up with an organization that feels limited by oversight, but that also can easily accumulate means to evade such oversight. Bonus points if people from those kinds of organizations find their way in legislative branches or overseeing powers. This has been a process of decades. Also surveillance, cybercrime and business do connect. If you look at the history of capital flows in the US, you will see a massive shift of capital from military has been redirected to the surveillance industry. If you would cut out surveillance from the USA economy, things would look quite different. The stock market is heavily skewed towards companies with this business model. As food for thought, think about what the GDP looks like without Apple, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI etc. To give an example of just one facet, Meta alone makes billions on crime each year [1] and will fight toot and nail anyone who dares to threaten their business model of addiction and privacy violation. To continue down this path against the interests of the public, these companies feel confident enough to try their hands at dangerous games [2], of which history teaches us that will always end in tears, because zero-sum is in the end a hunger game. [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu... [2] https://abc45.com/news/nation-world/big-tech-ceos-attend-trumps-inauguration-jeff-bezos-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-sundar-pichai-spacex-amazon-meta-tesla-google-facebook https://abc45.com/news/nation-world/big-tech-ceos-attend-tru...
- saidnooneever 14d ago
  a lot of these companies sell to people with money. its just that ordinary folks cant afford million dollar contracts. there are varying degrees ofc. not everyone is NSO group or such ex intelligence folks. many sell licenses to red teams and security service providers (and law enforcement in some cases). private intelligence companies use such tooling to gather information on individuals for business and private customers too. a lot of toolkits also allow to just add your own exploits via scripting etc. so you can get exploits in 1 place and tooling in another etc. there are laws, but those are not everywhere, and its unclear whos dealin to who in a lot of cases
  - exceptione 14d ago
    > private intelligence companies use such tooling to gather information on individuals for business and private customers too. Yes, that is a very scary. These weapons are being used against journalists and politicians threatening personal business interests.
- strictnein 14d ago
  > That is why I am not too enthusiastic that our Dutch intelligence agency will receive offensive capabilities as well AIVD[0] has had world renowned offensive cyber capabilities for a long time now. They punch _way_ above their weight class, equalling and maybe surpassing the capabilities of countries like Russia, although Russia throws more people at it so they end up with a broader overall impact. It's actually really, really impressive what they've accomplished. You should be proud of it. For example of some of their good work: https://www.zdnet.com/article/dutch-spies-tipped-off-nsa-that-russia-was-hacking-the-democrats-new-reports-claim/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dutch-spies-tipped-off-nsa-tha... "When hackers operating next to Moscow’s Red Square launched an attack against the Democratic Party in 2015, someone was watching. And that someone, according to new reports, was the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD). Netherlands newspaper de Volkskrant and the public broadcaster NOS reported on Thursday evening that AIVD hackers had penetrated the Russian operation back in the summer of 2014." More here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/26/dutch-media-reveal-country-to-be-secret-u-s-ally-in-war-against-russian-hackers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/26... [0] https://english.aivd.nl/ https://english.aivd.nl/

exceptione 14d ago

Yup, but here is the rub: you and me can't buy the real stuff. You have to be a professional law breaker, which means you are in organized crime (don't forget the white collar guys), or you are working for Intelligence, in whatever capacity, in whatever oversight. The problem is that for offensive surveillance organizations the line between crime and work gets blurred quickly. That is why I am not too enthusiastic that our Dutch intelligence agency will receive offensive capabilities as well. Information is power, and you will soon end up with an organization that feels limited by oversight, but that also can easily accumulate means to evade such oversight. Bonus points if people from those kinds of organizations find their way in legislative branches or overseeing powers. This has been a process of decades. Also surveillance, cybercrime and business do connect. If you look at the history of capital flows in the US, you will see a massive shift of capital from military has been redirected to the surveillance industry. If you would cut out surveillance from the USA economy, things would look quite different. The stock market is heavily skewed towards companies with this business model. As food for thought, think about what the GDP looks like without Apple, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI etc. To give an example of just one facet, Meta alone makes billions on crime each year [1] and will fight toot and nail anyone who dares to threaten their business model of addiction and privacy violation. To continue down this path against the interests of the public, these companies feel confident enough to try their hands at dangerous games [2], of which history teaches us that will always end in tears, because zero-sum is in the end a hunger game. [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu... [2] https://abc45.com/news/nation-world/big-tech-ceos-attend-trumps-inauguration-jeff-bezos-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-sundar-pichai-spacex-amazon-meta-tesla-google-facebook https://abc45.com/news/nation-world/big-tech-ceos-attend-tru...

saidnooneever 14d ago
a lot of these companies sell to people with money. its just that ordinary folks cant afford million dollar contracts. there are varying degrees ofc. not everyone is NSO group or such ex intelligence folks. many sell licenses to red teams and security service providers (and law enforcement in some cases). private intelligence companies use such tooling to gather information on individuals for business and private customers too. a lot of toolkits also allow to just add your own exploits via scripting etc. so you can get exploits in 1 place and tooling in another etc. there are laws, but those are not everywhere, and its unclear whos dealin to who in a lot of cases
- exceptione 14d ago
  > private intelligence companies use such tooling to gather information on individuals for business and private customers too. Yes, that is a very scary. These weapons are being used against journalists and politicians threatening personal business interests.
strictnein 14d ago
> That is why I am not too enthusiastic that our Dutch intelligence agency will receive offensive capabilities as well AIVD[0] has had world renowned offensive cyber capabilities for a long time now. They punch _way_ above their weight class, equalling and maybe surpassing the capabilities of countries like Russia, although Russia throws more people at it so they end up with a broader overall impact. It's actually really, really impressive what they've accomplished. You should be proud of it. For example of some of their good work: https://www.zdnet.com/article/dutch-spies-tipped-off-nsa-that-russia-was-hacking-the-democrats-new-reports-claim/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dutch-spies-tipped-off-nsa-tha... "When hackers operating next to Moscow’s Red Square launched an attack against the Democratic Party in 2015, someone was watching. And that someone, according to new reports, was the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD). Netherlands newspaper de Volkskrant and the public broadcaster NOS reported on Thursday evening that AIVD hackers had penetrated the Russian operation back in the summer of 2014." More here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/26/dutch-media-reveal-country-to-be-secret-u-s-ally-in-war-against-russian-hackers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/26... [0] https://english.aivd.nl/ https://english.aivd.nl/