SPYWARE NSO is thought to be used to target activists and journalists

Critics previously claimed that the NSO Group Spyware was concluded to target media and other innocent people, but new findings might have revealed the extent to the abuse. The Washington Post has shared a multi-partner investigation that claims that Pegasus NSO software is used to succeed in hacking 37 phones, including journalists, activists, and two women closest to Saudi journalists who are killed by Khashoggi.

The victims were on the list of 2016 50,000 era of telephone numbers from countries believed to supervise and use extensive NSO tools, such as Hungarian Arabs and Saudi. This list includes 1,000 people who are clearly not in accordance with the criminal targets intended by software, including more than 600 politicians, 189 journalists, 85 human rights activists and 65 business executives.

Around a dozen Americans work abroad are on the list, but the investigative partners cannot conduct forensic studies on most of their cellphones or find evidence of successful hacking. NSO previously said Pegasus could not be used to peek at American devices.

NSO firmly denied claims from the investigation. It states that information has “no factual basis,” and rejects the idea that Pegasus is used to target Khashoggi or his colleagues. It stated that he turned off “several times” access to past violations, and that the list was too large to focus solely on the number that would be targeted by his client countries. The company went as far as hiring a libel lawyer, Thomas Clare, who accused the investigative partner because of “misinterpretation and mischaracterized” data while making “speculative and unfounded assumptions.”

NSO has historically pinned abuse claims in the countries themselves, and said it reviewed the human rights record of a particular country before doing business.

The report came one and a half years after Facebook demanded NSO for allegedly activating the attack on the exploitation of whatsapp, and only months after the laboratories claimed that NSO software was used to hack the iPhone Journalist Al Jazeera using the imessage defect. But it is true of the accusation, they will at least affect the reputation of NSO – they give doubts about the company’s statement that only serves customers pursuing clear targets such as terrorists.