NSO

The U.S. government placed two Israeli spyware companies on a blacklist this week, all but totally cutting them off from business opportunities with American firms. The move is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to clean up the ethically bankrupt spyware industry before it spins totally out of control.Sam Bankman-Fried Using a VPN, McDonald’s AI Drive Thru Fails, Buzzfeed AI Quizzes Suck | Editor PicksIntellexa and Cytrox, which have both been described as “Israeli-controlled,” are known for selling shady…

The widow of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi says in a lawsuit that surveillance software built by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group was used to spy on her messages in the months leading up to her husband's death.In a civil suit filed Thursday in the Northern District of Virginia, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said that NSO "intentionally targeted" her devices and "caused her immense harm, both through the tragic loss of her husband and through her own loss of safety, privacy, and autonomy." NSO initially said…

The widow of Jamal Khashoggi—a Saudi journalist brutally executed by intelligence agents for writing critically about the regime—is suing the NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance company allegedly responsible for creating malicious spyware surreptitiously installed on her and her late husband’s devices. Hanan Elatr believes communications gleaned from her device without her knowledge for nearly a year led to her husband’s detention and eventual grisly dismemberment by bone sawat the hands of Saudi assassins. Now, more than…

Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, Bush family scion, and flop presidential candidate, once considered helping to sell NSO Group spyware to U.S. federal law enforcement agencies. Yvette Nicole Brown on the Frog and Toad Series and Voice ActingBush’s private equity firm, Finback Investment Partners, mulled buying a 5 percent stake in a holding company that was being used to sell NSO’s surveillance products inside the U.S., the Financial Times reported. That holding company, Gideon Cyber Systems, is primarily owned by…

Israeli digital surveillance for hire giant NSO Group reportedly deployed at least three newattacks last year targeting human rights workers and other members of civil society spread out around the world using Apple devices. All of those “zero-click” exploits, according to new research from The Citizen Lab, could tap NSO into a victim’s device without them ever having to click a dirty link or any interaction by the target. Though the new attacks highlight NSO’s continued effort to crack Apple products, there is a silver…

The Israeli surveillance technology company NSO Group used at least three methods for breaking into iPhones when targeting members of civil society in 2022, according to a report by the Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto.The methods, known as zero-click exploit chains, allows the company to circumvent security features of the Apple Inc. phones and install NSO's “Pegasus” spyware, which can collect information from a device and also use its cameras and microphones for real-time surveillance. In…

An Israeli firm's hacking tools have been used against journalists, opposition figures and advocacy organizations across at least 10 countries - including people in North America and Europe - according to new research published Tuesday by Microsoft Corp and the internet watchdog Citizen Lab. Citizen Lab said in its report that it had been able to identify a handful of civil society victims whose iPhones had been hacked using surveillance software developed by the Israeli company, QuaDream Ltd - a lower-profile competitor…

In November of 2021, after years of ongoing scandals, the Biden administration formally blacklisted the NSO Group, a notorious spyware maker from Israel, shutting it off from American business and investment opportunities. But the New York Times now reports that not every part of the government was on the same page about that decision.Sam Bankman-Fried Using a VPN, McDonald’s AI Drive Thru Fails, Buzzfeed AI Quizzes Suck | Editor PicksJust five days after the White House blacklisted the spyware firm, an unknown federal…

WASHINGTON—Embattled Israeli technology firm NSO Group acknowledged that its clients had sometimes misused the company’s high-powered hacking tools but defended the need to give law-enforcement and intelligence agencies the ability to digitally break into and monitor smartphones.In his first media interview since taking over as chief executive in 2022, Yaron Shohat said NSO Group has lost customers since the Biden administration levied stiff measures against the company in late 2021, but has…

The US Supreme Court let Meta Platforms Inc's WhatsApp pursue a lawsuit accusing Israel's NSO Group of exploiting a bug in the WhatsApp messaging app to install spy software allowing the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents. The justices turned away NSO's appeal of a lower court's decision that the lawsuit could move forward. NSO had argued that it is immune from being sued because it was acting as an agent for unidentified foreign governments when it installed the…