OP-ED: Pegasus and the NSO Group: The dark world of cyber mercenaries

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Revelations that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s smartphone was potentially a target of a highly sophisticated cyber attack is just the tip of the iceberg. Like the hacking of Transnet’s system, spyware installed on a president’s phone is an onslaught on ...

and with 42 countries as signatories , it aims to stop the sales of military gear to authoritarian regimes. But Israel isn’t a signatory, and it’s only an arrangement — adherence is voluntary. “In the absence of international regulation,” says Van der Waag-Cowling, “how does one even start to police this? These are the difficulties that we are dealing with.”

“I think the Israeli government very much want to have companies like NSO Group because it gives them an advantage in intelligence cooperation with other countries. If you look at NSO Group’s government customers, it appears they are all very close allies of the Israeli government, or countries where the Israeli government is hoping to improve intelligence ties or diplomatic ties, perhaps.

Ultimately, defending against spyware like Pegasus is a Sisyphean undertaking, because, as Oxford explains, it boils down to resources: the spies — whether they are backed by governments or criminal syndicates, will always have more money than their targets. “One of the targets mentioned in the Pegasus project was France’s Emmanuel Macron. The reporting mentioned some sensible mitigations that Macron had. He had a separate secure phone he used for confidential calls. Still, he had a personal phone. People have personal phones, it’s just a fact of life. You can’t ask everyone in government to give up their personal phones. So, that’s always going to be a way in and a vulnerability.

 

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