Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising firm previously linked to the delivery of zero-click spyware, is the top bidder for Starlink ad impressions in 105 countries, according to a new report from Reuters. Researchers say it all points to a large-scale tracking effort aimed at users of SpaceX’s satellite internet service.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, posted on X that data from TrendAI suggest the existence of a “worldwide surveillance op targeting @Starlink users.”

Discover-Tech was previously named in Citizen Lab’s October 15th report as the buyer of ordinary-looking ads that delivered Candiru spyware to devices at Al Jazeera without any user interaction. Candiru is an Israeli mercenary spyware vendor (now rebranded as Integrity Labs) that develops tools capable of silently compromising phones and computers. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security added Candiru to their trade restriction list, known as the Entity List, over concerns it supplied surveillance technology used against journalists, activists, and government officials.

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[–] 3 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Can you clarify here, are you suggesting that any internet browsing should be via VM?

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago

    Preferably. See the Whonix approach in Qubes OS. There you can be only targeted as a class of Tor users, not as an individual. The blast radius of system compromise is limited, requiring a privilege escalation to break out of containment.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Yes. Use QubesOS.

    I wouldn't touch the internet without it.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

    Thanks for the tip, I’d actually never heard of this distro. It seems like it might be pretty heavy duty for day to day use, though? Can you do your banking, taxes, etc.? Those are the essential things that tend to fail for me when I take a more privacy-focused approach to my digital life.

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  • Banking is fine.

    The biggest issue for daily use is USB devices (microphone, camera, etc) and hardware acceleration (HD video playback and video games).

    But, yeah, I use it daily and only own 1 computer. Been my setup for years, and I could never go back. The pros outweigh the cons 100 times over

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  • Absolutely yes. You don't need an app for banking, just a website.

    It's safer too. I do all my banking in a Disposable VM. It's a fresh install of Debian or Fedora, which takes one click and about 30 seconds to create and load. When you close the browser, the VM is destroyed. This is the safest way to do banking.

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