NSO publishes list of 450 target phones

After a storm unleashed by revelations about the software’s goals, Israel restricted sales of Pegasus software. According to an Israeli trade release, companies are now allowed to export cyber security and surveillance software to 37 countries instead of the previous 102. Calculist “.

This change could have repercussions for the maker of the controversial Pegasus tracking software NSO Group. Because according to various reports, countries on all continents were or were among the clients of the NSO. According to its own transparency report, the NSO exports its products not only from Israel, but also from Bulgaria and Cyprus.

According to the Israeli newspaper Harretz Digital forensic teams such as Amnesty International and Citizen Laboratory in Toronto have uncovered a number of potential targets through spyware tracking on their phones. Last summer, Project Pegasus – hosted by Forbidden Stories, a Persian NGO with the help of Amnesty’s Defense Laboratory – organized the International Federation of Journalists to investigate thousands of additional potential targets selected by potential NSO group clients around the world.

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According to the source, targets have been identified with the highest number of casualties worldwide so far.

More than 450 hacking cases have been reported. Harretz It is hoped that the list, compiled with the help of Amnesty’s Defense Laboratory, will only include cases that have been confirmed to be infected by another digital forensic team, such as Amnesty or Citizen Lab (who helped create this list). These include cases where French intelligence agencies or private companies such as Apple or WhatsApp have publicly confirmed the attacks.

However, the Israeli outlet insists that the persons believed to be the target are not included in the list – for example, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who allegedly received spyware via WhatsApp News.

The NSO Group, which refuses to confirm the identities of its clients and claims to be unaware of their targets, has denied in most of these cases that digital forensic analysis could not fully identify its software.