Israel has sold a spyware program on phones to countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco that “targets activists and journalists”

The company added in a statement that the original investigation on which the reports were based, by the Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories and the human rights organization Amnesty International, was “full of false assumptions and non-theory. documented ”.

The allegations relate to the use of the program known as Pegasus. Newspapers around the world reported the allegations on Sunday, including the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and 14 other media outlets.

Pegasus infects iPhones and Android devices to make it possible to receive messages, photos and emails, record calls, and use microphones and cameras in an unobtrusive manner.

By examining a number of phones whose numbers were on the list, which the media reported targeting, it was found that more than half of these phones were infected with the Pegasus program.

Reports did not indicate the source of the figures mentioned, but the media claim to have verified more than 1,000 people in more than 50 countries.

Reports revealed that numerous figures had been collected in ten countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain.

When the organizations that conducted the investigation attempted to contact officials in those countries, they either denied using Pegasus or denied abusing their surveillance capabilities.

According to reports, the mentioned list includes around 180 journalists from numerous organizations, including Agence France-Presse, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera and other media organizations.

The list also includes heads of state and government, members of Arab royal families and business leaders.

The list included two women close to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed at his country’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

Investigations revealed that spyware was targeting Khashoggi’s fiancee’s phone days after her murder, and that his wife’s phone was also targeted through a spyware program between September 2017 and April 2018. .

NSO denies “any connection in any way to the gruesome murder”.

WhatsApp filed a complaint against NSO in 2019, accusing the Israeli company of being behind cyber attacks against 1,400 cell phones using the Pegasus program.

At the time, the Israeli company denied any violation, but was banned from using the WhatsApp platform.

“Very few companies“

BBC Analysis by Joe Tidy :

We are not dealing with new allegations, what is new is the growing range of innocent targets. There are approximately 200 journalists from 21 countries whose phone numbers are included in the list.

It is expected that more names of prominent personalities whose phone numbers have been mentioned on the mentioned list will be revealed.

Much of the allegation is shrouded in mystery, including the source of this list and how many phones have actually been hacked.

And here is NSO returns and denies the allegations, which are another blow to her as she tries to improve her reputation.

Two weeks ago, the company released its first “transparency report,” which detailed human rights policies and commitments.

Amnesty International called the 32-page report a “sales manual”.

The new allegations would damage the reputation of the Israeli company even more, but it would not suffer financially.

Only a few private companies can produce the type of offensive spyware that NSO sells.

It is clear that the software market, often unregulated, is booming.