ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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Israel based newspaper Haaretz reports on a conspiracy by Israeli surveillance firm NSO involving spying on Amnesty International. NSO was founded by three veterans of the IDF’s premier signals intelligence unit. Also even more worrying is that the NSO software may be used to police dissidents in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
While dealing with this obviously has an international aspect the government of Israel could prove it's bona fides by investigating NSO and sanctioning the company if the claims are found to be true.
An Amnesty International employee has been targeted with Israeli-made surveillance software, the human rights group said Wednesday, adding to a growing number of examples of Israeli technology being used to spy on human rights workers and opposition figures in the Middle East and beyond.
In a 20-page report, Amnesty outlined how it thinks a hacker tried to break into an unidentified staff member's smartphone in early June by baiting the employee with a WhatsApp message about a protest in front of the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
Like many other Israeli startups in the security field, NSO was founded in 2010 by three veterans of the army’s premier signals intelligence unit, 8200: Niv Carmi, Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio. They started work on Pegasus, which remains NSO's only product, immediately after founding the company.
The software can infect cellphones, allowing someone to record calls, remotely access the device's camera, see text messages, obtain GPS coordinates, and more. The software can be remotely installed onto any mobile device without the owner's knowledge. ...
The Amnesty International report said the organization identified a second human rights activist, in Saudi Arabia, who was targeted in a similar way to its staffer. Citizen Lab said it found traces of similar hacking attempts tied to Qatar or Saudi, hinting at the use of the Israeli spyware elsewhere in the Gulf.
Any possible use of Israeli technology to police dissent in the Arab world could raise uncomfortable questions both for Israel, which still sees itself as a bastion of democracy in the region, and for countries with no formal diplomatic ties to the Jewish state.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/amnesty-we-were-targeted-with-israeli-nso-cyberweapons-1.6336971
The full Amnesty Report is available here:
Amnesty International Among Targets of NSO-powered Campaign
Summary
In June 2018, an Amnesty International staff member received a malicious WhatsApp message with Saudi Arabia-related bait content and carrying links Amnesty International believes are used to distribute and deploy sophisticated mobile spyware. Through the course of our subsequent investigation we discovered that a Saudi activist based abroad had also received similar malicious messages. In its analysis of these messages, Amnesty International found connections with a network of over 600 domain names. Not only are these domain names suspicious, but they also overlap with infrastructure that had previously been identified as part of Pegasus, a sophisticated commercial exploitation and spyware platform sold by the Israel surveillance vendor, NSO Group.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/r...tional-among-targets-of-nso-powered-campaign/
While dealing with this obviously has an international aspect the government of Israel could prove it's bona fides by investigating NSO and sanctioning the company if the claims are found to be true.
An Amnesty International employee has been targeted with Israeli-made surveillance software, the human rights group said Wednesday, adding to a growing number of examples of Israeli technology being used to spy on human rights workers and opposition figures in the Middle East and beyond.
In a 20-page report, Amnesty outlined how it thinks a hacker tried to break into an unidentified staff member's smartphone in early June by baiting the employee with a WhatsApp message about a protest in front of the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
Like many other Israeli startups in the security field, NSO was founded in 2010 by three veterans of the army’s premier signals intelligence unit, 8200: Niv Carmi, Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio. They started work on Pegasus, which remains NSO's only product, immediately after founding the company.
The software can infect cellphones, allowing someone to record calls, remotely access the device's camera, see text messages, obtain GPS coordinates, and more. The software can be remotely installed onto any mobile device without the owner's knowledge. ...
The Amnesty International report said the organization identified a second human rights activist, in Saudi Arabia, who was targeted in a similar way to its staffer. Citizen Lab said it found traces of similar hacking attempts tied to Qatar or Saudi, hinting at the use of the Israeli spyware elsewhere in the Gulf.
Any possible use of Israeli technology to police dissent in the Arab world could raise uncomfortable questions both for Israel, which still sees itself as a bastion of democracy in the region, and for countries with no formal diplomatic ties to the Jewish state.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/amnesty-we-were-targeted-with-israeli-nso-cyberweapons-1.6336971
The full Amnesty Report is available here:
Amnesty International Among Targets of NSO-powered Campaign
Summary
In June 2018, an Amnesty International staff member received a malicious WhatsApp message with Saudi Arabia-related bait content and carrying links Amnesty International believes are used to distribute and deploy sophisticated mobile spyware. Through the course of our subsequent investigation we discovered that a Saudi activist based abroad had also received similar malicious messages. In its analysis of these messages, Amnesty International found connections with a network of over 600 domain names. Not only are these domain names suspicious, but they also overlap with infrastructure that had previously been identified as part of Pegasus, a sophisticated commercial exploitation and spyware platform sold by the Israel surveillance vendor, NSO Group.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/r...tional-among-targets-of-nso-powered-campaign/