L
Lookout
lookout.com · Company blog · on HN since 2013
Mobile security company Lookout publishes threat intelligence on mobile malware, surveillance tools, and phishing, and also posts job listings.
What HN saysHN links it for threat research, such as an exploit chain and Android surveillanceware analysis; commenters call one find fascinating.
17HN people shared it
11linked it in comments
8stories submitted
18story points
8 months agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Lookout Discovers Massistant Chinese Mobile Forensic Tooling – Threat Intel2 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 2Mobile security - Lookout2 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 3Monokle: The Mobile Surveillance Tooling of the Special Technology Center [pdf]1 people · 9 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 4Phishing is more problematic on mobile1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 5Lookout hiring Search/ Crawler Engineers1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 6Mobile Apt Surveillance Campaigns Targeting Uyghurs [pdf]1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 7Understanding the Spectrum of Mobile Risk1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 8Detail1 people · first shared 2014
- 9Xcodeghost1 people · first shared 2024
- 10Careers1 people · first shared 2013
- 11State of mobile security 20121 people · first shared 2013
- 12Darksword1 people · first shared 2026
- 13Badbazaar surveillanceware apt151 people · first shared 2025
- 14Detail1 people · first shared 2013
- 15Guardzoo houthi android surveillanceware1 people · first shared 2024
What HN people wrote when they linked it
extrapolate · 2015-01-07
There needs to be another party in there to communicate with the phone regardless, right? I simply interpret that quote to mean you can use the "switch" with a 3rd party service like Android Device Manager / Cerberus, that Qualcomm is not operating directly.
Actually, looking at the video it appears they're partnering with https://www.lookout.com/ for this.
LookoutCareers · 2013-08-01
San Francisco. H1B transfers welcome. Software Engineer for our Crawlers/ Spiders team at LOOKOUT.
Assembling the world’s largest and most comprehensive data set about mobile applications starts with discovery and acquisition of those apps. As part of the Acquisition team you will contribute to the infrastructure that feeds the mobile threat network. You will build highly scalable crawlers that scour the web for mobile apps, and highly scalable services that accept data directly from mobile endpoints themselves. You will own a key part of the platform that feeds Lookout’s Mobile Threat Network.
Desired qualities:
You think at scale, and with high availability.
You’re excited about building out world-class crawler infrastructure.
You love to pull apart sites and protocols, figure out what makes them tick, and write libraries to emulate their protocols.
You are a strong software engineer, thinking in frameworks and clean interfaces.
You enjoy coming up with creative solutions to solve challenging and intricate problems that may well live inside of a black box.
Toys
Ruby, Resque, Wireshark
Apply here: https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?jvi=oIbNWfwm
eugenekolo · 2026-03-18
It's actually a fascinating find by Lookout, iVerify, and Google. This is a multi million dollar exploit chain sold to various buyers.
Complete full chain 1-click exploit from Safari to complete device take over exfiltrating personal data, passwords, and crypto wallets.
https://www.lookout.com/threat-intelligence/article/darksword
https://iverify.io/blog/darksword-ios-exploit-kit-explained
https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/darksword-ios…
gradeless · 2025-09-16
Theres been a consistent pattern of both low quality and advanced malware looking for and targeting the weakness introduced by rooting a device.
Here is a recent report of widespread advanced malware looking to see if a device is rooted - https://www.lookout.com/threat-intelligence/article/badbazaar-surveill…
Here is a report of malware using root - https://zimperium.com/blog/new-advanced-android-malware-posing-as-syst…
Root does not only provide privilege escalation, it also provides attractive options for exploit persistence on a device, something which is difficult to achieve on modern Android and iOS.
_tk_ · 2024-07-10
Original analysis here: https://www.lookout.com/threat-intelligence/article/guardzoo-houthi-an…
christop · 2015-08-21
More companies should have this information up front. For example, Lookout has an open source framework for generating more visual privacy policies:
https://github.com/lookout/private-parts
https://www.lookout.com/legal/privacy
(though I'd note that page still lacks the why of what's being collected)
bzalasky · 2014-09-23
Don't be discouraged. If you're open to constructive feedback, share some of your side projects with the HN community. I'd also encourage you to explore more opportunities, as Google, Facebook, etc... probably get more applications than they can handle. We have an active internship program at Lookout Mobile Security that provides real, hands-on experience, if you're interested (https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?gh_jid=2141).
reaclmbs · 2013-02-01
Lookout Mobile Security - San Francisco, CA
https://www.lookout.com/resources/reports/state-of-mobile-security-201…
We're hiring in administrative, hr, ops, bizdev, product, and engineering (Ruby/Obj-C/JavaScript/Java/C).
https://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qT79VfwO&v=1&a…
jerbear4328 · 2024-01-26
That one virus on the App Store was one of, if not the biggest known instance of a virus on the App Store, and your article gives a number four times smaller than half a billion. From your [1]:
> But now, thanks to emails published as part of Apple's trial against Epic Games, we finally know how many iPhone users were impacted: 128 million in total, of which 18 million were in the US.
> "In total, 128M customers have downloaded the 2500+ apps that were affected LTD. Those customers drove 203M downloads of the 2500+ affected apps LTD," Dale Bagwell, who was Apple's manager of iTunes customer experience at the time, wrote in one of the emails.
> Apple also disclosed the apps that included the malicious code, some incredibly popular such as WeChat and the Chinese version of Angry Birds 2.
Still a huge deal, particularly in China, but considering all the virus really did was collect some device info (less information than most ad networks) (and maybe it was able to open URLs and popups on command)[1] and it was the biggest virus on the App Store ever (that I can find), maybe not as awful as you suggest.
The scams on the App Store, yeah that's pretty bad. Though, can you point me at a marketplace as big as the App Store without loads of scams?
[1]: https://www.lookout.com/blog/xcodeghost#what-does-it-do
fibbery · 2013-11-21
OK. Well, here are a few ads that list alcohol as a perk that I turned up with a 5min search.
* Atlassian: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/job/Team-Lead-Architect/af8692ef/?source=…
* Lookout: https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?gh_jid=2221&gh_src=i6…
* Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/careers
* Twitter's job page shows employees with the classic red solo cup: https://twitter.com/jobs/why_work
* Shop it to me: http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/shopittome/data-integration-engineer/agOM…
* Disqus: http://boards.greenhouse.io/disqus/jobs/2629?t=ug5j4s
* Cozy: http://www.ventureloop.com/ventureloop/jobdetail.php?r=f_in&jobid=…
* Blackboard: http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=BLACKBOAR…
As well as bunch of other names I've never heard of (Forio, Reesio, thredUP, UberConference, FiveStars, PagerDuty)
JeuneeSimon · 2013-09-09
Lookout is hiring!
Making the mobile world safer is an incredible technical challenge. There is no better reason to come to work in the morning than to solve thorny problems.
https://www.lookout.com/about/careers
A few of the positions that are especially important to us right now are:
* Senior Android Engineer - We get the complexity of Android OS and are looking for candidates excited about touching multiple layers of the stack and working with our Infrastructure and Ops teammates to make this corner of mobile safer for everyone in the world.
http://grnh.se/4ebqyp
* Server Engineers -We're looking for experienced devs who can build services, design APIs, and grok complex systems to support hundreds of millions of users and petabytes of data across multiple services.
http://grnh.se/kwhj7s
* Senior MySQL DBA - We're looking for a Sr. MySQL Database Administrator to help us manage and scale our data tier, as well at helping ensure its integrity and availability. Lookout deals with large volume and throughput of data, ranging from the petabytes of backed up user data, to our Mobile Threat Network, which helps us identify and block malware, plus all the other stuff that goes into supporting a large website.
http://grnh.se/23gy4x
The full set of job listings you can apply to is at https://www.lookout.com/about/careers
You can also email me directly at [email protected]