7/22/2019

''ISRAELI SPYWARE FIRM CLAIMS?''


JERUSALEM : An Israeli spyware firm thought to have hacked WhatsApp in the past has told clients it can scoop user data from the world's top social media, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

The London paper wrote that NSO group had ''told buyers its technology can surreptitiously scrape all of an individual's data from the servers of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, according to people familiar with its sales pitch''.

An NSO spokesperson, responding  in a written statement to request for comment, denied the allegation. ''There is a fundamental misunderstanding of NSO, its services and technology,'' it said.

''NSO's products do not provide the type of collection capabilities and access to cloud applications, services, or infrastructure as listed and suggested in today's FT article.''

In May, Facebook-owned WhatsApp said it had released an update to plug a security hole in its  messaging app that allowed insertion of sophisticated spyware that could be used to spy on journalists, activists and others.

It said the attack bore ''all the  hallmarks of a private company that works with a number of  governments around the world''.

It did not name a suspect but Washington based analyst  Joseph Hall, chief technologist at the Centre for democracy and Technology, said at the time that the hack appeared related to NSO's Pegasus software.

It is normally sold to law enforcement and intelligence services.

Friday's FT report, citing documents it had viewed and descriptions of a product demonstration, said the programme had ''evolved to capture the much greater trove of the information stored beyond the phone in the cloud, such as full history of a target's location data, archived messages or photos.''

NSO says it does not operate the Pegasus system, only licensing it to closely vetted government users ''for the sole purpose of preventing or investigating serious crime including terrorism''.

The group came under the spotlight in 2016, when researchers accused it of helping spy on an activist in the United Arab Emirates.

NSO is based in the  Israeli seaside high tech hub of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. - [AFP]

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