Tag Archive for: NSOs

FBI Considered Buying NSO’s Phantom Spyware That Can Hack US Phones: Report

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Image for article titled The FBI Reportedly Considered Buying Spyware That Could Hack Any Phone in the U.S.

Photo: Amir Levy (Getty Images)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation spent two years considering whether it should procure a clandestine commercial spyware tool that could reportedly hack any phone within the United States, according to an investigation by New York Times Magazine.

That spyware system, dubbed “Phantom,” was offered secretly to U.S. government agencies by the NSO Group, Israel’s notorious cyberweapons distributor, over a multi-year period between 2019 and last summer. According to the Times, the potential business relationship was negotiated even as NSO increasingly became the subject of controversy, with critics accusing it of aiding human rights abuses in nations around the world.

The American government was reportedly interested in Phantom because NSO’s primary spyware, Pegasus, does not work on U.S. telephone numbers and therefore couldn’t be wielded in law enforcement investigations. The paper reports:

During a presentation to officials in Washington, the company demonstrated a new system, called Phantom, that could hack any number in the United States that the F.B.I. decided to target. Israel had granted a special license to NSO, one that permitted its Phantom system to attack U.S. numbers. The license allowed for only one type of client: U.S. government agencies.

Also interested in the company’s services were numerous other federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. military’s Africa Command, the newspaper reports. The FBI also purchased Pegasus from the NSO Group, the Times reports.

The bureau reportedly pursued negotiations with the company for at least two years. During that period, FBI and Justice Department lawyers continually sought to clarify whether deploying the product would violate domestic wiretapping laws. The agency only backed out last summer—around the time that a series of journalistic exposés caused global amounts of trouble for NSO by exposing the scale and scope of its malware’s penetration. Since that time, things have only gotten worse for the Israeli company, as the U.S. turned its back on any partnerships—even going so far as to

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Amnesty says NSO’s Pegasus used to hack phones of Palestinian rights workers

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An aerial view shows the logo of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group at one of its branches in the Arava Desert, southern Israel July 22, 2021. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

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JERUSALEM, Nov 8 (Reuters) – The mobile phones of six Palestinian rights workers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were hacked using Israeli technology firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, Amnesty International and internet security watchdog Citizen Lab said on Monday.

The new findings followed NSO’s blacklisting last week by the U.S. Commerce Department amid allegations its spyware targeted journalists, rights activists and government officials in several countries.

NSO, which voiced dismay at the U.S. move, exports its products under licences from Israel’s Defence Ministry and says it only sells to law enforcement and intelligence agencies and that it takes steps to curb abuse.

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London-based Amnesty and Toronto’s Citizen Lab said they had independently confirmed that Pegasus had been used to hack the Palestinian activists’ phones, after Front Line Defenders, an international rights group, began collecting data in October about the suspected hacking.

The Israeli Defence Ministry did not immediately comment on the new findings.

Asked about the allegations, NSO said: “As we stated in the past, NSO Group does not operate the products itself … and we are not privy to the details of individuals monitored.”

Three of the six people work for Palestinian rights groups that Israel designated as terrorist organisations last month, saying they had funnelled donor aid to militants. The groups named by Israel have denied the allegations.

Stopping short of blaming Israel for the alleged hacking, some of the groups whose workers were said to have been targeted demanded an international investigation.

“We don’t have evidence. We can’t accuse a certain party since we don’t have yet enough information about who carried out that action,” Sahar Francis, director of Addameer Organization, said at a news conference in Ramallah.

“The United Nations is responsible for human rights and for protecting…

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9th Circ. Nixes NSO’s Immunity Bid In WhatsApp Hacking Suit

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By Hailey Konnath (November 8, 2021, 9:23 PM EST) — The Ninth Circuit on Monday said a California federal judge was correct to refuse to find Israeli spyware company NSO Group immune from litigation over an alleged WhatsApp hacking, ruling that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act doesn’t protect private companies.

The three-judge panel shot down NSO’s argument that it could claim foreign sovereign immunity under doctrines that apply to foreign officials, noting that the law governing the issue “has roots extending back to our earliest history as a nation.”

“[I]t leads to a simple answer — no,” the panel said. “Indeed, the title of the legal doctrine itself — foreign sovereign immunity — suggests…

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