NSO’s Pegasus Scandal Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg of Israeli Spyware

“Stop what you’re doing and read this. This leak is going to be the story of the year,” wrote the eminent NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden last month as Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories obtained a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers of potential targets of the Israeli spyware company, NSO Group.

NSO’s main service is Pegasus, a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable the tool’s operators to extract messages, photos, and emails; record calls; and secretly activate microphones. The geographical scope of both NSO clients and victims seems limitless – from the Middle East to Europe, the U.S., Africa, East Asia, and Latin America. Traces of the Pegasus malware were most recently discovered on phones in the United Kingdom and France, amongst 45 other countries where the virus was found.

The company’s usual targets, which were revealed over the last few years, were mostly journalists, activists, and dissidents – some of whom ended up being tortured, arrested, killed, or forcibly disappeared as a consequence. However, the formidable, leaked list included some targets with unbelievable portfolios; NSO has moved from spying on journalists to spying on presidents, prime ministers, royalty, CEOs, and public figures. One of the most prominent highlights in the leaked list was France’s president Emmanuel Macron and Morocco’s king Mohammed VI.

This prompted the French government to demand an explanation from the Israeli government, which then hurried to send its defense minister to Paris for a few hours to assure France that Israel will take this issue seriously. The French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems has confirmed finding traces of Pegasus malware on the phone of a senior journalist in its state-owned international news network France24.

This latest revelation underlines one crucial conclusion: NSO is out of control. Its malicious hacking services, which are virtually unconstrained, have become a major security threat in cyberspace, and it has the full backing of an Israeli government willing to turn a blind eye to the company’s activities in order to bolster its regional and international relations.

Israel is an international hub for spyware companies whose main personnel almost always comes from the Israeli military.

Indeed, NSO is just the tip of the iceberg. Israel is an international hub for spyware companies whose main personnel almost always comes from the Israeli military, especially the Israeli Military Intelligence Unit 8200. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have perfected a multitude of surveillance strategies as a result of their decades-long abuse of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories in flagrant violation of their right to privacy.

The Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu was even NSO’s patron, whereby it promoted and pushed its spyware sales across the world. Wherever Netanyahu traveled on official visits, deals between the visited country’s government and NSO followed – from Hungary to Mexico, India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and others.

This positions Israel as a force for regional and international destabilization where state-sanctioned – and state-sponsored – private spyware firms like NSO have been the informal arm of the Israeli government that are employed “off the record” to do the dirtiest work, such as espionage and interference in foreign countries.

This can also be seen in the activities of another Israeli cybersecurity firm, Psy-Group, which ran a $2 million voter suppression operation in support of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to the 2020 report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The operation was paid by George Nader, an advisor to de facto  UAE ruler Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ).

The Israeli government’s complicity with NSO’s cyberweapons should raise more than eyebrows. Accountability is paramount. The very least Israel’s government should do is to immediately revoke NSO’s export license and ban spyware trade.

NSO does not only offer security, it also provides infectious viruses. It does not aim to make the world safer – with its Pegasus cyberattack tool, it aims to make it more vulnerable, more at risk, and more afraid. If NSO can hack into the phones of statesmen, parliamentarians, and CEOs, no phone is safe from its malware until action is taken.