Phantom is a substitute for Pegasus: an Israeli spy company’s plan to sell its famous program to the American police

A brochure and e-mails obtained by Motherboard showed the attempts of West Bridge, the American arm of the Israeli spy company, NSO, to sell a spy device called "Phantom" to US policemen.

This news is the strongest evidence yet of an Israeli spy company that sells piracy programs to authoritarian governments to enter the American market, and the American police desire to obtain such tools shows, as a law enforcement official described the piracy technology as "wonderful."

The correspondence obtained by the site began in August 2016 when a Westbridge employee sent an email to the San Diego Police Department offering information about Phantom, which he described as a "mobile intelligence system that would be a great addition to your investigation offices."

"Convert your target smartphone into a goldmine of information," says a phantom booklet. The booklet bears the name of Westbridge, the North American subsidiary of the NSO Group.

"After penetrating the phone remotely, Phantom can withdraw the target's emails, text messages and contact list, as well as track its location, operate the device's microphone and take pictures using its camera," the booklet said.

A former employee of NSO told Motherboard that the Phantom is only the trade name of the notorious Israeli company program, "Pegasus" when the company tried to market it in the United States, a phone penetration tool that the company sold to several countries - including United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Saudi Arabia - millions of dollars, and Saudi Arabia has used this software to monitor colleagues of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"At the time, the attack from Phantom was running with one click except for older BlackBerry devices," the former employee added.

A single click attack requires the target to click on something a customer sends to the phone, a link that is delivered via text message for example, but now the attack does not require any interaction from the target.

The US Police and Spyware
The brochure states that the system supports iPhone and various other phone models from manufacturers such as Samsung, and it can "overcome encryption operations, communications protocols, and any obstacle in the complex world of communications."

David Meyer, a San Diego police sergeant, then told West Bridge in an email that the piracy system "looks great," and the employee of the company offered to provide a personal explanation of the system, according to the emails.

"San Diego Police Department often engages in conversations with sellers trying to sell a product or service so that we can provide the highest quality of police services," Lieutenant Sean Takeuchi - a San Diego Police Department's media official - told MotherBoard in an e-mail. To our societies, the talks occur routinely, and in 2016 it was the role of Sergeant Meyer to evaluate the sellers who contacted us, "he explained, and that technology is only used after obtaining approval from the legal authority.

John Scott Ryleton, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who tracked the use of "NSO" by other countries, sees that communication "This may be the tip of the iceberg," and said, "The local police use secret piracy technology." It is the worst scenario that worries us all, local laws and oversight mechanisms do not exist, so abuse will be confirmed. "

In its brochure, "West Bridge" stressed its relations with the United States, noting that its headquarters is located in Bethesda (Maryland).

The company attempted at some point to acquire another American company because of its sales relations with the US government, and previously offered its piracy technology to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, but the agency did not purchase the product because it was too expensive, according to previously obtained internal emails.

This appears to be the only reason why the San Diego Police Department did not purchase NSO technology. Sergeant Meyer said in his email, "We simply don't have that kind of money going forward with such a huge project."

The "NSO" had previously confirmed that Pegasus cannot be used to target US phone numbers.

"We confirm previous statements that our products sold to foreign countries cannot be used for cyber surveillance within the United States, and no customer has ever been given the technology to target phones with US numbers," the group's spokesman said in a statement to Mother Board.

This incident comes at a time when the "NSO" is involved in a lawsuit with Facebook after it exploited a security vulnerability in WhatsApp that allowed the Israeli company clients to penetrate the updated devices completely by ordering the victim's phone only, and Facebook recently indicated how to use the Pegasus system of servers in The United States to direct attacks.

Although NSO says that the Pegasus system is intended to deal with cases of terrorism and serious crimes, the company's Israeli customers have used the company's technology to target political opponents, journalists, critics and human rights defenders, and in one case someone has used piracy technology to target a lawyer working in a case Civil against the company.

Motherboard revealed last month that an NSO employee had been able to use the Pegasus program installed by a company customer in the United Arab Emirates to spy on his girlfriend.