Alwaght- The US administration announced it is blacklisting an Israeli company for selling spyware that enabled “transnational repression.”
The spyware and hacker-for-hire company NSO Group was in the heart of a scandal a couple of months ago in which some government used the firm’s software for espionage on journalists, opposition, and other countries’ officials.
Based on leaked targeting data, findings by a global media consortium earlier this year provided evidence that the spyware from NSO Group was used to infiltrate devices belonging to a wider range of figures.
The Department of Commerce said that NSO Group, and the firm Candiru, are being added to the “entity list” which limits their access to the US components and technologies by requiring government permission for exports.
Reports in July said that a number of countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia used the NSO-provided Pegasus spyware to hack into mobile phones of opposition activists and social media users abroad.
Researchers say that the methods developed by NSO have grown so sophisticated that they can now effect phones without user interaction.