It was used to hack the phones of Al Jazeera journalists.. An Israeli company shuts down the Pegasus spy system نظام

The New York Times reported that the Israeli company "NSO" this month shut down the "Pegasus" spying system that it developed and used to hack the phones of journalists in the Al Jazeera Media Network.

The New York Times quoted a source in the Israeli company as saying that its decision to close the "Pegasus" spying system came after it was exposed.

An investigation of the “What is Hidden is Greater” program, which was broadcast on Al-Jazeera screen last December, revealed - in cooperation with an international laboratory specialized in penetration operations - the details of the Israeli Pegasus spy program, and its advanced technology for penetrating and spying on phones, known as the “Zero Click” technology. (zero click).

The investigation of the "What is Hidden is Greater" program followed the process of hacking and spying on the phones of a number of Al Jazeera journalists using the expensive Pegasus program technology, including a phone used by the program team.

At the time, the investigation triggered wide reactions and human rights demands to investigate what it had revealed about the explicit violations of hacking and spying on journalists' phones.

And last December, tech giants - including Microsoft and Google - joined Facebook's legal battle against the Israeli hacker NSO. They filed a supporting memorandum in federal court warning that the company's tools are "powerful and dangerous."

The memo was submitted to the US Court of Appeals, thus opening a new front in Facebook's lawsuit against NSO, which it filed in 2019 after it was revealed that the electronic monitoring company had exploited a bug in the instant messaging application "WhatsApp" owned by Facebook. , to help monitor more than 1,400 people around the world.

The Israeli company defended itself by saying that it sells digital hacking tools to police and spy agencies, and should benefit from "sovereign immunity," a legal doctrine that generally shields foreign governments from lawsuits, but lost that argument in Northern California in July. the past.

In addition to Microsoft, Google and Facebook, Cisco, VMWare, owned by Dell Technologies, and the Washington-based Internet League joined the circle of opponents, saying that granting immunity to NVIDIA is a threat to the company. SOO" will lead to the spread of hacking technology and "more foreign governments with powerful and dangerous electronic surveillance tools."