By hacking Bahrain activist’s iphone, NSO group reclaims its reputation
NSO group has been in news since past December for its hacking spyware tools Pegasus used to hack journalists and dissidents. Recently, nine activists from Bahrain who were “successfully hacked”, four were believed with a “high degree of confidence” by Citizen Lab have been targeted by the government of Bahrain.
Citizen lab also reports that NSO Group’s Pegasus malware was successfully hacked the phones between June 2020 and February 2021.Those members who were hacked belonged to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and two political dissidents living in exile.
Past December, 36 Al-Jazeera journalists were hacked using commercially sold spyware from Israel’s NSO Group which exploited an unknown flaw in Apple’s iMessage service, Saudi Arabia and UAE was behind this attack.
Few months back, Bangladesh has bought Israeli-made surveillance equipment that can be used to monitor the mobile phones of hundreds of people simultaneously even though these two countries are not geopolitically aligned.
Though, Israel as a nation is considered to be a super power in cyber warfare domain, it is Israel’s cyber intelligence private companies that are spreading their wings across the world. The Israeli group has been operating in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America; mostly in countries with weak regulatory bodies. There are various models with which the Israeli technology is flowing across the globe.
In case of NSO group, it is shell companies like Q Cyber Technologies in Israel, OSY Techno-logies in Luxembourg, and by the name of Westbridge in North America. Another Israeli Company — “Quadream” was found to be involved in selling cyber-espionage tech services to Saudi Arabia. The services were used to hack smartphones of dissidents and spy on the communications of the opponents of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS).
Others like Candiru are operating independently using Israeli technology of cyber-intrusion, received investment from Qatar Investment Bank. According to the Citizen Lab report, Candiru’s exploits have been linked to nation-state malware attacks observed in Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Anyvision Interactive Technologies is one of Israel’s most curious facial recognition startup used to monitor West Bank Palestinians at checkpoints on the way into Israel.
Some experts believe that the regular hacking of activists and journalists through the Israeli spyware could altogether bring a pause in the sale and transfer of the spyware technology until proper rules governing its use are set. But, the fact is they may still continue to flow given the widespread network of off-shoots.
