Given sufficient motivation the little snitch dev could essentially supply chain attack every user, or even specific users.

Said motivation could be a nation state handing them $XXX million dollars

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parhamn 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or even sell the whole org for say $50M and no one ever mentions anything.

I think the type of users it attracts (techies, crypto ppl, etc) makes it worth more too.

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lapcat 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> I think the type of users it attracts (techies, crypto ppl, etc) makes it worth more too.

No, this by itself doesn't make Little Snitch or any business worth $50M. You're dreaming. That's a crazy valuation.

	▲	scheme271 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Various intelligence agencies are willing to pay 2-3M for a working exploit for iphone or android. I think that they would be fine with paying 50M for a userbase that has a high population of devs, admins, etc. Being able to backdoor someone like this in the right organization down the line is probably worth 50M.

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umpalumpaaa 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s what i meant. Thanks for reading my mind. :)

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lapcat 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Said motivation could be a nation state handing them $XXX million dollars

You're missing the most important part of the motivation here: why in the world would a nation-state give a damn about Little Snitch, especially to the tune of $XXX million dollars?

A nation-state could pay $XXX million to your significant other to spy on you. But again, a nation-state doesn't give a damn about you.

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wafflemaker 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>why in the world would a nation-state give a damn about Little Snitch, especially to the tune of $XXX million dollars?

Per user hacked, it can be very cheap¹ compared to bribing anyone. And give data/access that SO can't get.

State is not interested in you until it does. Being Jewish, Polish, Gypsy, Gay. Or just WrongThinking. Or maybe it becomes super cheap and easy to process all information?

1: it can even be free. You either give us backdoor to all your users or you rot in jail. Here's a complementary beating up or pictures of your kids, to argument our position further.

	▲	selcuka 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> it can even be free. You either give us backdoor to all your users or you rot in jail. It is already a thing, at least in UK and AU [1]: > Both countries now claim the right to secretly compel tech companies and individual technologists, including network administrators, sysadmins, and open source developers – to re-engineer software and hardware under their control, so that it can be used to spy on their users. Engineers can be penalized for refusing to comply with fines and prison; in Australia, even counseling a technologist to oppose these orders is a crime. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/new-fight-online-priva...

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chabreck 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

its been known for some time that little snitch and other personal firewalls are established targets of three-letter agencies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13813160