#nso group

Responding to the news, the Head of the Security Lab at Amnesty International, Donncha Ó Cearbhaill said:

“This decision brings us a step closer towards accountability for up to 1,400 WhatsApp users targeted with Pegasus spyware in this case, as well as the countless other individuals around the world, who have continued to be targeted since this case was filed in 2019. This court order sends a clear signal to the surveillance industry that it cannot continue to enable spyware abuse with impunity.

(source)

In June 2019, three Israeli computer engineers arrived at a New Jersey building used by the F.B.I. They unpacked dozens of computer servers, arranging them on tall racks in an isolated room. As they set up the equipment, the engineers made a series of calls to their bosses in Herzliya, a Tel Aviv suburb, at the headquarters for NSO Group, the world’s most notorious maker of spyware. Then, with their equipment in place, they began testing.

The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO’s premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.

Since NSO had introduced Pegasus to the global market in 2011, it had helped Mexican authorities capture Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo. European investigators have quietly used Pegasus to thwart terrorist plots, fight organized crime and, in one case, take down a global child-abuse ring, identifying dozens of suspects in more than 40 countries. In a broader sense, NSO’s products seemed to solve one of the biggest problems facing law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in the 21st century: that criminals and terrorists had better technology for encrypting their communications than investigators had to decrypt them. The criminal world had gone dark even as it was increasingly going global.

But by the time the company’s engineers walked through the door of the New Jersey facility in 2019, the many abuses of Pegasus had also been well documented. Mexico deployed the software not just against gangsters but also against journalists and political dissidents. The United Arab Emirates used the software to hack the phone of a civil rights activist whom the government threw in jail. Saudi Arabia used it against women’s rights activists and, according to a lawsuit filed by a Saudi dissident, to spy on communications with Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, whom Saudi operatives killed and dismembered in Istanbul in 2018.

Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group

Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.

Want to Check if Pegasus Spyware Targeted Your Phone? Use This Tool

Israeli group NSO spyware Pegasus has reportedly helped governments in countries including India hack the phones of thousands of activists, journalists and politicians. An international media consortium has revealed some details about the targets over the past two days. However, the scope of attacks targeted via Pegasus remains to be defined. Meanwhile, Amnesty International researchers have…

Just over a year ago, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into a Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. He never walked out. He was murdered and dismembered; American intelligence agencies believe the Saudi royal family ordered the assassination.

Monday, the Washington Post announced that it hired Juliette Kayyem, a columnist who is a senior advisor to NSO Group, a spyware company suspected of helping the Saudi government spy on Khashoggi.