Washington: Israeli surveillance software company NSO Group has temporarily blocked several government clients around the world from using its Pegasus spyware as the company investigates its possible misuse, Washington-based non-profit media outlet NPR reported.
The development also follows raids on some offices of the NSO Group by Israeli government agencies “to begin assessing” security breach allegations against the company’s Pegasus spyware.
Meanwhile, French authorities have found traces of Pegasus software on the phones of several French targets on Amnesty and Forbidden Stories’ list – providing independent corroboration of this month’s explosive reports, a tweet by a Reuters correspondent said, quoting La Monde and an online investigative journal, Mediapart.
According to NPR, NSO Group suspending supply of the software is in response to an investigation by the Pegasus Project, a consortium of media outlets that reported that the company's Pegasus spyware was linked to hacks and potential surveillance of telephones of people including journalists, human rights activists and heads of state.
“There is an investigation into some clients. Some of those clients have been temporarily suspended,” said the source in the company, who – according to NPR – spoke on condition of anonymity because company policy states that NSO “will no longer be responding to media inquiries on this matter and it will not play along with the vicious and slanderous campaign.” NPR reported that the company employee would not name or quantify the government agencies - or their countries - that NSO has recently suspended from using its spyware, asserting that Israeli defence regulations prohibit the company from identifying its clients.
NSO says it has 60 customers in 40 countries, all of them intelligence agencies, law enforcement bodies and militaries. It says in recent years, before the media reports, it blocked its software from five governmental agencies, including two in the past year, after finding evidence of misuse, NPR reported.
NSO’s ongoing internal investigation checked some of the telephone numbers of people that NSO’s clients reportedly marked as potential targets. “Almost everything we checked, we found no connection to Pegasus,” the employee told NPR, declining to elaborate on potential misuse NSO may have uncovered.
