this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Easier is a very relative term. It’ll be really expensive to use a genuine zero-day to do it. Such exploits are few and far between.
How is it expensive? It is if it eqates to the zero day becoming of public domain, and this is not the case here. They can say they guessed the password while in fact they exploited some unknown vulnerability...
Zero days are extremely expensive costing in the millions of dollars even if you’re not publishing exploit details. Just using it is extremely costly because each attempt exposes your bug to the world, which is an opportunity that it could get caught and patched. Android and iPhone both have mechanisms to detect and report crashes which could easily cost you your bug. Plus, on the exploit markets, a bug that hasn’t been used is worth more because there have been literally zero days of opportunity to defend against it.
There is definitely a cost to using something that expensive and that requires a necessary level of risk. You’ve got to be worth it, and the supply of such bugs is extremely low and sometimes zero depending on your exact software version.
to be fair to the incompetent people in law enforcement, I do believe "trying to kill a presidential candidate slated to win and being a millimeter away from getting it done" would justify relying on a 0-day.
Indeed. That's a pretty motivating reason.