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| NSO Group hacked the phones of 6 Palestinian activists |
Security researchers announced on Monday that spyware from the famous Israeli hacking company NSO Group, half of which belonged to groups allegedly involved in terrorism by the Israeli Defense Minister, were found on the phones of six Palestinian human rights activists.
This revelation represents the first known case of a Palestinian activist who was the target of the Pegasus spyware program. The prevalence of journalists, human rights defenders and political opponents has been documented since 2015.
The researcher who first discovered it, Mohammed al-Maskati, of the nonprofit Front Line Defenders, said it was not yet clear who installed the NSO group's spyware on the activists' phones.
Shortly after the discovery of the first two invasions in mid-October, the Israeli defense minister declared six groups of Palestinian civil society to be terrorist organizations.
Frontline soldiers in Ireland and at least two victims said Israel was the prime suspect.
Israel has provided almost no public evidence to support this terrorist's design. The stated goal of the Palestinian factions is to steal their money and suppress opposition to the Israeli military regime.
Three Palestinian hackers working in civil society organizations. Front Line Defenders said others do not want and want to remain anonymous.
Piracy is an attack on civil society
Security researchers from Amnesty International and the University of Toronto Citizen Lab have independently confirmed this finding in a joint technical report, and the NSO Group is increasingly being indicted for the misuse of spyware. Israel has also been criticized for its lax regulation of the digital surveillance industry.
The Biden administration blacklisted the NSO group last week to prevent it from using US technology.
In response to the report, the company said in a statement that it would not identify its customers for contractual and national security reasons. It sells its technology to government agencies for use in combating serious crime and terrorism.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense approved the export of spyware from the NSO Group and other private Israeli companies.
Security researchers said it was not yet clear when and how the phones were hacked. Four of the six hacked iPhones used special SIM cards issued by Israel Telecom, researchers said.
This called into question the company's claim that the exported version of Pegasus could not be used to hack Israeli phone numbers. The company also said its target is not US numbers.
Tehilla Schwartz Altshuler, a legal expert at the Israel Democracy Institute, called the findings worrisome, especially when it became clear that Israeli security agencies are largely exempt from the country's data protection laws and use commercial spyware from the NSO Group.
Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has filed a lawsuit against the Israeli company for exploiting a vulnerability to attack the globally encrypted messaging app WhatsApp.