NSO Group’s spyware has been used to commit human rights violations around the world on a massive scale, according to a major investigation into the leak of 50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets. These include heads of state, activists, civilians, and journalists, including Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée.
According to the same investigation, human rights activits, journalists and heads of state have been targeted by authoritarian governments, across the world, using hacking a spyware sold by the Israeli surveillance company 'NSO Group'.
The investigation highlights widespread and continuing abuse of NSO's hacking spyware called 'Pegasus' which the company confirms is only intended for use against terrorist groups, drug and human traffickers, and criminals.
Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow operators of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including secretly activate microphones and cameras.
Based on the investigation, the leak contains a list of 50,000 phone numbers that have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016. The list includes many close family members of one country's ruler, suggesting he might have instructed the country's intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of tracking and spying on their own relatives.
The list of governments believed to be NSO customers who were entering numbers into a system: 1- Azerbaijan
6- Mexico (more than 15,000 numbers)
7- Morocco (more than 10,000 numbers) 8- Saudi Arabia
10- United Arab Emirates (more than 10,000 phone numbers)
Bruno_Fernandes8 on July 19th, 2021 at 11:20 UTC »
This was shared on Twitter by Edward Snowden, who said that it would be the biggest story of the year. Fuck NSO. Truly evil shit.
izpo on July 19th, 2021 at 07:26 UTC »
one of the journalists is also Jamal Khashoggi’s wife.
Amnesty group, a group that originally exposed NSO, sued NSO but Israeli Court rejects petition against NSO saying that: "Ministry of Defense supervises that human rights are not violated".
So do you get that? Israeli court actually said that government oversee what NSO does and then amnesty group went to expose the method by themself. NSO was targeting amnesty for years already!
Hasby_pro on July 19th, 2021 at 05:53 UTC »
Isreali government doesn't care who uses this tool. It's now possible to access anyone's phone if you have enough money. Their claim that it's only used against criminals and terrorists is clearly a lie.
From the washingtonpost article.