Israeli Phone Malware Maker QuaDream Apparently Ready To Call It Quits After Suffering A Little Negative Press

from the cut-and-run dept

QuaDream, an NSO-alike with links to Israeli intelligence services, first made international headlines last year. And for the worst reasons. An investigation found QuaDream (much like NSO Group) sold iPhone-targeting malware to human rights violators. These sales were given a layer of plausible deniability, handled by a Cyprus-based company on behalf of QuaDream as it collected paychecks from garbage governments around the world.

Further investigations by Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered QuaDream’s links to abusive governments, as well as abusive deployments of its zero-click exploit to target journalists, activists, political opponents, and dissidents.

Now that it’s inadvertently shown its whole ass to the world, it appears QuaDream is shuttering its malware business. Or at least, it wants all of its critics to believe that’s what it’s doing. But this report from the Jerusalem Post indicates that, real or otherwise, QuaDream’s latest business move involves laying off several actual human beings.

Israeli cybersecurity company QuaDream reportedly summoned many of its 40 employees to a pre-termination hearing on Monday ahead of widespread layoffs, according to Globes.

This downturn (and its unfortunate effect on 40 QuaDream employees) is being blamed on everything but the company’s decision to sell to human rights abusers, engage in zero oversight of its products’ deployment, and it’s willingness to engage in ethically awful business practices.

QuaDream, which can only access iPhones (unlike NSO, which can also hack Android phones), wrote in a letter to court: “The crisis in the industry began due to the public disclosure of the activities of some of the companies from 2018 onward, which resulted in the fact that in November 2011, the US Chamber of Commerce put NSO and Candiru on its blacklist. Immediately after that, at the start of 2022, the regulator in Israel decided to reduce the number of countries to which it is allowed to sell the companies’ products in the industry from 102 to only 37, which caused a severe economic crisis in the entire industry.”

When you’re blaming a government for harming your business by…