This article originally appeared in The New York Times
It is widely considered the world’s most powerful spywareCapable of reliably cracking encrypted communications of iPhone and Android smartphones.
Software, PegasusMade by an Israeli company, NSO GroupCapable of tracking down terrorists and drug cartels. It has also been used against human rights activists, journalists and dissidents.
Now, an investigation published Friday by The New York Times Magazine has found that Israel, which controls the export of spyware like it exports conventional weapons, has made Pegasus a key component of its national security strategy. Use it to advance your interests around the world.
The year-long investigation by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti also reports that the FBI purchased and tested NSO software for years, planning to use it. home surveillance until the agency finally decided not to deploy the equipment last year.
The Times found that the sale of Pegasus played a key role in securing the support of Arab countries in Israel’s campaign against Iran and in negotiating the 2020 diplomatic agreements, the Abraham Accords, signed at a Trump White House ceremony, which between Israel and some normalized relations. Its longtime anti-Arab.
America asked for cyber weapons for domestic use.
The Times found that the US had also proceeded to acquire Pegasus. The FBI bought the spyware in 2019, in a never-before-reported deal, despite multiple reports that it was used against activists and political opponents in other countries. It also spent two years discussing whether to deploy a new product called the Phantom within the United States.
Discussions in the Justice Department and the FBI continued until last summer, when the FBI finally decided not to use NSO weapons.
But the Pegasus device is still in a New Jersey building used by the FBI. And the company even gave the agency a demonstration of the Phantom, which could hack US phone numbers.
A brochure for potential customers obtained by the Times says that Phantom allows US law enforcement and spy agencies to “turn your target’s smartphone into an intelligence goldmine.”
The Times’ annual investigation was based on interviews with government officials, leaders of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, cyber experts, business executives and privacy activists in a dozen countries.
It tells the story of NSO’s rise from a startup operating from a converted chicken coop on an agricultural cooperative to being blacklisted by the Biden administration in November because it was used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” dissidents, journalists and others. is done to.
NSO started in the mid-2000s with two school friends, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavi, starting the startup in Banai Zion, an agricultural cooperative outside Tel Aviv, Israel.
One of his startups, Communitech, which offered cellphone tech-support workers the ability to control their customers’ devices — with permission — caught the attention of a European intelligence agency, Hulio said.
NSO was born, and the company eventually developed a way to gain access to the phone without the user’s permission – no need to click on malicious attachments or links. (That the company name sounded like NSA was just a coincidence).
‘You start to believe that your every move is being monitored.’
After NSO began selling Pegasus globally in 2011, Mexican authorities used it to nab Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo. And European investigators used it to break a child-abuse ring with dozens of suspects in more than 40 countries.
But abuses have also been exposed in reports from researchers and news organizations, including the Times.
Mexico used spyware to target journalists and dissidents. Saudi Arabia used it against women’s rights activists and aides of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was killed and decapitated by Saudi operatives in 2018.
That year, the CIA bought Pegasus to help American ally Djibouti fight terrorism, despite long-standing concerns about human rights abuses, including the harassment of journalists and the torture of dissidents.
In the United Arab Emirates, Pegasus was used to hack the phone of Ahmed Mansoor, a vocal critic of the government.
Mansoor’s email account was hacked, her geolocation was monitored, $140,000 was stolen from her bank account, she was fired and she was beaten on the street by strangers.
“You start to believe that your every move is monitored,” he said. In 2018, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the positions he held Facebook and Twitter.
The Pegasus has been awarded to the leaders of Poland, Hungary, India and other countries, through a series of new deals licensed by the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not order the Pegasus system to be cut, even when the Polish government enacted laws that many Jews inside and outside Israel saw as Holocaust denial, or when Netanyahu at a conference hosted by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki observed. Himself, falsely listed “Jewish criminals” among those responsible for the Holocaust.
Blacklisting of NSOs Israeli officials were furious.
US companies are trying to build their own devices that can hack phones with the ease of NSO’s “zero click” technology.
One of those companies, Boldend, told defense-industry giant Raytheon in January 2021 that it could hack the popular Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, but then lost the capability after a WhatsApp update, according to a presentation. Received. time.
The claim was particularly noteworthy because, according to one slide, a major Boldend investor is Founders Fund — a company run by billionaire Peter Thiel, who was one of Facebook’s first investors and remains on its board.
Recent America blacklisted NSO The company could be suffocated by denying the company access to the US technology needed to run its operations, including Dell computers and Amazon cloud servers.
The rebuke has angered Israeli officials who have condemned the move as an attack not only on the crown jewel of the country’s defense industry, but on the country itself.
“The people aiming their arrows against the NSO are actually targeting the blue and white flag hanging behind it,” said Yigal Unna, director general of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate as of January 5.
It is widely considered the world’s most powerful spywareCapable of reliably cracking encrypted communications of iPhone and Android smartphones.
Software, PegasusMade by an Israeli company, NSO GroupCapable of tracking down terrorists and drug cartels. It has also been used against human rights activists, journalists and dissidents.
Now, an investigation published Friday by The New York Times Magazine has found that Israel, which controls the export of spyware like it exports conventional weapons, has made Pegasus a key component of its national security strategy. Use it to advance your interests around the world.
The year-long investigation by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti also reports that the FBI purchased and tested NSO software for years, planning to use it. home surveillance until the agency finally decided not to deploy the equipment last year.
The Times found that the sale of Pegasus played a key role in securing the support of Arab countries in Israel’s campaign against Iran and in negotiating the 2020 diplomatic agreements, the Abraham Accords, signed at a Trump White House ceremony, which between Israel and some normalized relations. Its longtime anti-Arab.
America asked for cyber weapons for domestic use.
The Times found that the US had also proceeded to acquire Pegasus. The FBI bought the spyware in 2019, in a never-before-reported deal, despite multiple reports that it was used against activists and political opponents in other countries. It also spent two years discussing whether to deploy a new product called the Phantom within the United States.
Discussions in the Justice Department and the FBI continued until last summer, when the FBI finally decided not to use NSO weapons.
But the Pegasus device is still in a New Jersey building used by the FBI. And the company even gave the agency a demonstration of the Phantom, which could hack US phone numbers.
A brochure for potential customers obtained by the Times says that Phantom allows US law enforcement and spy agencies to “turn your target’s smartphone into an intelligence goldmine.”
The Times’ annual investigation was based on interviews with government officials, leaders of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, cyber experts, business executives and privacy activists in a dozen countries.
It tells the story of NSO’s rise from a startup operating from a converted chicken coop on an agricultural cooperative to being blacklisted by the Biden administration in November because it was used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” dissidents, journalists and others. is done to.
NSO started in the mid-2000s with two school friends, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavi, starting the startup in Banai Zion, an agricultural cooperative outside Tel Aviv, Israel.
One of his startups, Communitech, which offered cellphone tech-support workers the ability to control their customers’ devices — with permission — caught the attention of a European intelligence agency, Hulio said.
NSO was born, and the company eventually developed a way to gain access to the phone without the user’s permission – no need to click on malicious attachments or links. (That the company name sounded like NSA was just a coincidence).
‘You start to believe that your every move is being monitored.’
After NSO began selling Pegasus globally in 2011, Mexican authorities used it to nab Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo. And European investigators used it to break a child-abuse ring with dozens of suspects in more than 40 countries.
But abuses have also been exposed in reports from researchers and news organizations, including the Times.
Mexico used spyware to target journalists and dissidents. Saudi Arabia used it against women’s rights activists and aides of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was killed and decapitated by Saudi operatives in 2018.
That year, the CIA bought Pegasus to help American ally Djibouti fight terrorism, despite long-standing concerns about human rights abuses, including the harassment of journalists and the torture of dissidents.
In the United Arab Emirates, Pegasus was used to hack the phone of Ahmed Mansoor, a vocal critic of the government.
Mansoor’s email account was hacked, her geolocation was monitored, $140,000 was stolen from her bank account, she was fired and she was beaten on the street by strangers.
“You start to believe that your every move is monitored,” he said. In 2018, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the positions he held Facebook and Twitter.
The Pegasus has been awarded to the leaders of Poland, Hungary, India and other countries, through a series of new deals licensed by the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not order the Pegasus system to be cut, even when the Polish government enacted laws that many Jews inside and outside Israel saw as Holocaust denial, or when Netanyahu at a conference hosted by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki observed. Himself, falsely listed “Jewish criminals” among those responsible for the Holocaust.
Blacklisting of NSOs Israeli officials were furious.
US companies are trying to build their own devices that can hack phones with the ease of NSO’s “zero click” technology.
One of those companies, Boldend, told defense-industry giant Raytheon in January 2021 that it could hack the popular Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, but then lost the capability after a WhatsApp update, according to a presentation. Received. time.
The claim was particularly noteworthy because, according to one slide, a major Boldend investor is Founders Fund — a company run by billionaire Peter Thiel, who was one of Facebook’s first investors and remains on its board.
Recent America blacklisted NSO The company could be suffocated by denying the company access to the US technology needed to run its operations, including Dell computers and Amazon cloud servers.
The rebuke has angered Israeli officials who have condemned the move as an attack not only on the crown jewel of the country’s defense industry, but on the country itself.
“The people aiming their arrows against the NSO are actually targeting the blue and white flag hanging behind it,” said Yigal Unna, director general of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate as of January 5.
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