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This month, an investigative investigation by a coalition of international institutions detonated a global espionage scandal targeting heads of state and government, journalists and human rights activists, through a malicious program for cell phones developed by an Israeli company. The program is known as “Pegasus”, and it is developed by the “NSO Group”, and although the Israeli software is not new, as it was first discovered in 2016, the nature of the targets revealed by the latest investigation, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, highlighted The world's eyes for the first time are on the dark activities of Israeli technology companies, with global calls for censorship of the activities of these companies.
“The NSO Group develops technology that enables government agencies to detect and thwart terrorist and criminal plots, and its use is limited to and prevented crime and terrorism, and any use of our technology contrary to this purpose is a violation of our policies, our legal contracts, and the values that our company stands for.”
(Part of an official statement from the NSO Group)
Unlike their peers in many parts of the world with civilian systems, young men and women in Israel have no choice, after reaching the age of eighteen, but to perform compulsory military service (1) in the occupation army, a rule from which the conscript “Shelev Hollow” was no exception, as was the case of his colleagues with whom he served In the front rows around the Gaza Strip and other occupied territories, and although he was not associated with technical industries or cyber security in his civilian and military life, the few years after completing his military service were a watershed in his transformation from an ordinary young man to a founding partner in one of the most important companies in the world. Israeli cyber security is controversial in the world.
NSO Group "NSO" (networking sites)
Hulio's main goal after military service was to enter the vast e-commerce sector and create his personal wealth, something he specialized in Israeli soldiers who gained military and technical expertise from serving in the front lines of the army, or in elite units of the 8200 and Aman examples. And others, and while Hulio did not have any technical expertise, as he told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth himself in a rare (2) interview, this did not prevent him, "Nev Karmi" and "Omri Levy" from establishing the technology company specialized in cybersecurity "NSO" Group".
NSO was born on the ruins of CommuniTech, which was also founded by Hulio and Levi to help new smartphone companies in the world at a time when this emerging industry needed a lot of companies' time. Telephone To train and familiarize its customers with how to install the basic software for dealing with its products, the "Commune-Tech" company came up with a solution that enables phone companies to send a link to their customers, and through which companies access the phone itself and install its programs, which saves time and effort for everyone. It took quite a bit of time after that for Community-Tech to transform into NSO; After both Hulio and Levi abandoned the first company to establish the second, their goal shifted from making products that help people to developing spy software, after they discovered - it seems - that this new path is much more profitable than the previous one.
The beginning was in Mexico, where the founders of NSO claimed that the Pegasus program, their main product, had helped eliminate many of the main actors in the major drug cartels there; Thanks to its ability to infiltrate targeted phones through a fake link sent to the phone and through it it accesses all the phone owner’s data, starting with messages and calls, passing through its geographical location, and not ending with using the camera and microphone to record the conversations and conversations that take place within its scope. After that, Pegasus technology became able to speak for itself in all parts of the world, especially in the Middle East; Where (3) the technology was used to track down and arrest the famous Emirati human rights activist Ahmed Mansour in 2016, then in the killing of Saudi Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in late 2018 in his country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and then he obtained “Pegasus.”His fame as one of the most important means of electronic espionage, especially for the autocratic regimes in the Middle East and the world.
Emirati activist Ahmed Mansour (communication sites)
Despite the program’s technical efficiency that brought huge profits to the Israeli company, the matter turned into a nightmare for civil and human rights employers globally, a nightmare that some of its features were manifested in the hacking of the most famous conversations application “WhatsApp” (4) in May 2019, which returned “The (NSO) came to light as a result of the suspicion of the “Facebook” company, which owns WhatsApp, that the Israeli company was behind the hack, which demonstrated the ability of the company’s programs to penetrate huge numbers of mobile phones and spy on their owners for the benefit of government agencies and security services, at a time when it insists The founders of NSO say that their software is used only to combat global crime and terrorism.
The front pages of international newspapers are hardly devoid of periodic news regarding the involvement of NSO technologies in espionage operations against human rights defenders and activists around the world, while the involvement of the technologies of the company, whose headquarters is located in the city of Herzliya in the occupied territories, has not yet gone out of the control of individuals -or groups of civilians- in several countries, the aforementioned WhatsApp incident and others have shed light on a new stage in the espionage operations on individuals, a stage that is believed to be an important prelude towards effective espionage on Iran’s activities (5); The first and most important enemy on Tel Aviv's list. While some technology experts believe that the Israeli company's technology is about to have the ability to effectively monitor the population of entire cities, NSO(NSO) is not the only Israeli company tweeting in this domain, but it is accompanied by a not insignificant number of Israeli technology start-ups that appear year after year; Companies that are redefining the Israeli economy and are playing a small part in Israeli policies towards the Middle East and the world at large.
Although NSO drew a lot of attention after its technologies were accused of being involved in the tracking and murder of Khashoggi and the hacking of WhatsApp, the monitoring of the activities of “Pegasus” technology - which is owned by the company - especially and all the activities of Pegasus had begun before that Years ago, specifically in August 2016, Emirati activist Ahmed Mansour received a bombed message on his phone to send it back to the Canadian-based technical group Citizen Lab, which in turn traced the source of the malicious links contained in the message to Pegasus.
The Canadian group did not stop at Mansour’s case, but since then began to develop its own digital fingerprint, called “Athena”, which aims to track suspicious links sent to other human rights defenders and activists, in an electronic process that lasted for two years between August 2016-2018, before exiting Findings (6) In September 2019 announcing the spread of Pegasus' surveillance activities in 45 countries around the world, at least six of them had badly used Pegasus to monitor civil society elements inside and outside them.
Technical expert "Michael Shuloff" used the term "the art of finding vulnerabilities" (7) to describe the way "Pegasus" works within mobile operating systems, in addition to the specialization of "NSO" (NSO) to work on phones only, not computers or others. The graduates of the company's engineers and technicians are mostly from Unit 8200 and other elite technical units in the occupation army;
They do their best to search for unknown vulnerabilities (code errors) called “Zero-Day” in mobile operating systems, which is exactly what Pegasus does once it is installed on any phone.
Speculation began about the possibility of directing "Pegasus" technologies to spy on Iranians or to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.
This makes NSO the leading company in the world of phone espionage, as classified by Shulov, which the company has exploited to select its clients with great care, not only due to the strict restrictions imposed by the Israeli Ministry of War along with the export control agency The Israeli defense company - known by the acronym "DECA" - on technical exports that Israel fears will fall into the hands of its enemies, but also because the espionage technology provided by the company has opened a wide door for it - and Israel itself, by extension - to redraw a new map of relations with the company's clients from Arab countries mission to Israel.
For example, three deals between NSO and the UAE pumped nearly $80 million in profits to the Israeli company, deals that were brokered by Israeli officials and approved by the Israeli Ministry of War, but it was not only about money either, as the BP journalist believes. C "Paul Danhar", where the features of "friendship" have been forming for years in the form of diplomatic - informal relations - between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi against the background of common hostility to Iran, a relationship that culminated last year 2020 with the signing of an official agreement to normalize relations between the Emirates and Israel.
Tehran has always been the most important target on the table of the UAE-Israel alliance, with speculations about the possibility of directing Pegasus technologies to spy on Iranians or to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program, as happened previously in the “Stuxnet” cyber attacks, which was not excluded after the emergence of press reports (8) In May 2019, it was reported that another Israeli technology company, Black Cube, was involved in an attempt to sabotage the nuclear agreement by seeking to discredit some of those working on it in the Obama administration once Trump announced his withdrawal from the agreement in the same month.
"Its notoriety precedes it everywhere";
This is what the Israeli company, Black Cube, describes after its involvement in the case of the famous - notorious film producer - Harvey Weinstein. The company was tasked with researching the history of women and journalists who have been accused or published stories about a long list of harassment and rape crimes that Weinstein is currently accused of.
Either in an effort to discredit them, or to give the latter's lawyer "ammunition" (9) of information about the personal lives of his victims, which might help him in facing the lawsuits filed against his client.
Notorious film producer Harvey Weinstein (Reuters)
No sooner had the company apologized and got rid of its association with the Weinstein case, until other reports began to emerge about its involvement in a new attempt to discredit some civilians from the US administration of former President Barack Obama, specifically those who participated in or were part of the negotiations that led to the signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. As part of an attempt to discredit the agreement itself, among them (10) Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council who worked as an advisor on the Iranian file in the Obama administration, and Colin Kahl and Ben Rhodes, former foreign policy advisers in the same administration, and Caroline Tess (11) who served as a special assistant to the US President, and the first official in charge of legislative affairs for the Iran nuclear deal at the National Security Council, and other reports have indicated that the administration of former President Donald Trump itself (12) was involved in the Black Cube operations.Aiming to create bad publicity about the nuclear deal.
The cases of NSO and Black Cube shed light on the "dark and dirty secret" behind the "startup nation" slogan adopted by the occupation in marketing itself globally, as described by journalist Richard Silverstein. While Black Cube operates on the ground and with agents (or spies) impersonating human rights defenders and activists in order to research and scrutinize the lives of the targeted people, NSO does the electronic side of the matter, and both act as agents of the Israeli government, whose approval must be obtained when it comes to signing Contracts to export “espionage” technologies to potential customers, or work aimed at sabotaging other countries' foreign policies, as happened in the case of the Iran nuclear deal.
NSO claims, however, that its technologies are only meant to save lives and create a safer world by helping governments fight crime and terrorism, that it scrutinizes cases believed to threaten the security of innocent citizens, and that it can stop its programs and client contracts. If it is proven to use its technologies in a bad way, which Sheliff Holio claims has already happened with three customers without naming them, but Michael Shuloff - the cyber expert - believes that such a pledge from the company and its founder cannot be achieved most of the time, once the company sells its software to customers, It is difficult to track who is targeted by governments or law enforcement agencies that the company deals exclusively with, which in itself represents an unavoidable threat to civilian rights and liberties.
This argument is endorsed by Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent who had no qualms about describing NSO as the "worst of the worst" companies in the cybersecurity industries, due to the extensive use of its technology in breaches of the law. human rights activists around the world, and the same conclusion prompted Amnesty International (May) 2019 to begin taking the necessary legal measures (13) to get the Israeli government to revoke the export license for NSO technologies and prevent them from profiting. of "state-sponsored repression," as described by Margaret Sattertweet, director of the New York University School of Law.
Amnesty International’s decision to take legal action against the Israeli group before the same Israeli courts stemmed from its quest to stop targeting various activists, although the matter took the form of a project in which the organization partnered with the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and the Center for Global Justice of the New York University School of Law, and their first legal steps were Represented in a petition submitted to the Tel Aviv District Court on May 14, 2019 describing the continuing threat to human rights globally as long as the official NSO license continues with the approval of the Israeli Ministry of War.
But these lawsuits did not succeed, as expected, in stopping the company's operations and deals, and did not affect the popularity of its technologies around the world. Although it derives its strength from the protection of the Israeli Ministry of War at home and from the strength of its clients in their countries abroad. But on the contrary, the exact opposite may be what happened, as the demand for such technologies increased, especially from repressive governments and security services, especially with the presence of a strong and globally effective product, as in the case of “Pegasus”.
Not only does this make NSO an entity worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but it also adds to an Israeli economy that is completely dependent on this type of company, with more than 300 companies (16) specializing in cybersecurity covering wide areas starting From bank security, it does not end with defensive activities, infrastructure protection, and national security for the occupying entity, and although NSO technologies contribute to several human rights violations, the company is now turning to the irony of making an impenetrable mobile phone, a drug that is trying The company uses it to treat its own disease and bypass its own technologies to develop new ones that the same customers who use Pegasus need, and that it needs to protect the security of the private occupation if its customers - today's friends and potential enemies of tomorrow - decide to use its old technologies to threaten the national security of the occupying country, or any other country. of its virtual allies.
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Sources:
army in israel
Weaving a cyber web: Interview with CEO of NSO Group Shalev Hulio
Everything We Know About NSO Group: The Professional Spies Who Hacked iPhones With A Single Text
Monitoring software produced by an Israeli company that hacks WhatsApp
Why the WhatsApp spies may have eyes on Iran
Hide and Seek: Tracking NSO's Pegasus Operations in 45 Countries
How a hacked phone may have led killers to Khashoggi
Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials
How Israeli Tech Firms Act as Global Agents of Repression
Black Cube: An Israeli 'special Mossad' to whomever pays
Israel's Black Cube spied on Obama administration officials
Revealed: Trump team hired spy firm for 'dirty ops' on Iran arms deal
Israel: Amnesty International is taking part in legal action to stop NSO Group's monitoring of the Internet
Jamal Khashoggi's private WhatsApp messages may offer new clues to killing
Reckless VII: Wife of Journalist Slain in Cartel-Linked Killing Targeted with NSO Group's Spyware
The Rise of the Cyber-Mercenaries