Yeah, I'd say that this is actually a piece intended to try to prevent any political fallout with a close ally of the US (Israel) at the expense of the nuclear whipping boy (Japan).
I'd say this is mainly financial news, where the ownership and stock market representation is actually relevant. But it's a very weak piece to learn much about Cellebrite, and makes it sound like they build pinball machines and games before hacking iPhones.
It sounds like Cellebrite employees are largely ex unit 8200 members (Israel's SIGNIT program).[1] The article really doesn't seem to talk about Cellebrite's history much at all.
Any tech company in israel is largely ex unit 8200 members, along with other military tech units such as Mamram, Lotem, Matzov, Ofek and more.
The Israeli military enlists every 18 year old in the country, and if you've studied computers in high-school or at home as a hobby, you're more than likely to spend 3-6 years in a technological unit.
Israeli company helping the FBI investigate a terrorist's phone. Why would this cause political fallout?
That's exactly what allies are supposed to do for each other.
Far more importantly, strategically. But Japan has a fairly firm and stable political position compared to Israel. So it does not weigh on either side.
Israel's political position is not under serious threat except maybe the governance of the occupied territories. I suppose they have more vocal allies in the US Congress.
> "... built its business on pinball game machines and stumbled into the mobile phone security business almost by accident." (first paragraph)
Pinball? In Japan? this isn't going to be pinball.
> "has been building pinball-like game machines found in Japan’s pachinko parlors since the 1970s" (third paragraph).
So it isn't pinball at all, it's pachinko. I know this is almost besides the point, but do Bloomberg really have such a low opinion of it's readers they think it's impossible to explain? To me at least it reads like:
"Tiger Woods, who rose to fame playing a football-like game across golf courses in America..."
A bit unfair since "pinball machine" used to refer to exactly what a pachinko machine is for a couple of hundred years before the "modern pinball" arrived.
IMO it's a difference worth mentioning when pachinko is a big enough addiction there to make $187B in 2014 (vs US casinos $65.6B) and cause child deaths (while I was there, maybe is better now)
I get a different sense of lucre when I hear "left the pinball industry for better margins" (pocket change gaming) vs left the gambling industry (life savings gaming)
The revenues from Pachinko are complex and should not be directly compared to a trackable traceable business.
Pachinko is the primary method for the Yakuza to launder money, there's a reason there's one on every corner. Cash for tickets, tickets for cash/prizes. Clean money.
While pachinko is huge in Japan, pinball is also very popular. Source: My Uncle worked for Williams pinball, and Japan is where they made most of their money.
Would love to see a non-anecdotal source on this, as my understanding is that pinball sales in the US absolutley dwarfs totals for the rest of the world. Not saying Williams didn't do lots of other sales in Japan, but pinball-as-in-two-ish-flippers pinball sales should be highest in the US.
>Yuske believes that Japan’s love of video games is part of the reason why pinball has had trouble taking hold—why the game is more of a foreign curiosity for most than a cultural mainstay.
It's kind of fair that they assume people might not know what pachinko is, but I'd say "slot machine" would be a far better comparison than "pinball machine".
So basically the NSA/CIA develop the tech, license it to a contractor, who the FBI can then hire. Got it. I bet they know who to use it on before they even need to through Parallel Construction too. This is what the future looks like.
It’s a fairly straightforward method for a researcher to identify what has been changed, and from that reverse-engineer what the flaw was and then build a tool to exploit that flaw
Given Apple's almost unlimited cash they could always make companies like this an offer no intelligent person could turn down (especially if public) and have them explain what they do.
When you mix with operative/intelligence crowd - the work is incredibly fun, the access you have to all kinds of info (and people and gear) is unprecedented and the generous compensation is a nice side effect.
Apple can top the compensation, but not the first two parts.
I wonder, is Apple hiring such companies to poke holes at its OS before it gets out of beta, or even after it's launched? Because if not, maybe they should.
"All was quiet after the researchers' announcement, and for good reason: Apple purchased their security firm -- LegbaCore -- just two months after news of Thunderstrike 2 broke. According to the company's founder Xeno Kovah, the team is going to be working on "low-level security" at Apple, which we'll take as shorthand for making sure that OS X's firmware is less susceptible to attacks in the future."
Volkswagen owning 100% of Lamborghini does not make the latter a german car manufacturer.