NSO Group, US Phones and “Money Bags”

In the middle of summer 2017, Gary Miller, executive of Mobileum, an American company designing security software for mobile networks, was invited to attend a phone meeting. An Israeli company, NSO Group, affiliated with Mobileum; They say they are very interested in the “connections” the company maintains with American telephone operators.

But the meeting did not go as Mr. Miller thought. Mobileum’s flagship product is a software solution for 3G and 4G networks that allows you to track any unusual traffic – so detect potential attacks. The NSO Group has no intention of purchasing this software: the Israeli company is looking for access to the networks of US mobile operators. What do you get for mobile? “We leave money bags at your desks”, Omri Lavie, co-founder of the NSO Group, responded based on Gary Miller’s testimony that he received help from Whistleblower’s organization, Whistleblower Aid, and provided evidence of his story to California MP Ted W. Liu (Democrat).

The NSO group is at the center of the Pegasus scandal, named after the high-performance spyware the company has sold to several countries, which it has used to spy on lawyers, journalists and human rights activists. But at the time, if the company was looking for access points to the U.S. telephone network, it was for another service provided by its subsidiary Circles.

Circles sells geolocation service, which makes it possible to pinpoint the exact location of a mobile phone from its single number. To do this, it takes advantage of a security flaw in the SS7 protocol, which is a central software brick in mobile and mobile data transfer, but it is not very secure. In 2014, computer security researchers demonstrated that network access could take advantage of the shortcomings of this protocol to not only access the phone’s geolocation, but also take SMS or voice calls.

In a written reply Washington Post, Partner with The world Fourteen more “Project Pegasus” articles were bundled with banned stories, Mobile said ⁇ [ne] No. [avoir] And [ne] Never [avoir] Had a business relationship with the NSO Group ; Contrary to what the Israeli company thought, the company also guarantees that there will be no direct access to the operators’ network, so the door could not be provided afterwards. In a written statement, he was the spokesman for Omri Lavie, co-founder of the NSO Group that attended the meeting, and he is said to have proposed. “Cash bag”, Mr. According to Miller’s testimony, he denies any wrongdoing. “No agreement signed with Mobilum” And Mr. Lavi “I do not remember using that expression”, He explains; If so, “It was a joke”.

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