NSO Group Technologies is an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones.
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18 Facts About NSO Group
2.
NSO Group is a subsidiary of the Q Cyber Technologies group of companies.
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3.
NSO Group was founded in 2010 by Niv Karmi, Omri Lavie, and Shalev Hulio.
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4.
NSO Group seeks to uncover a surfeit of zero-day exploits in target devices to ensure smooth continuous access even as some of the security vulnerabilities exploited by NSO Group are inevitably discovered and patched, with labs in the company's Herzliya headquarters featuring racks stacked with phones being tested against new exploits.
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5.
NSO Group denies being "a tool of Israeli diplomacy", and denies the presence of a backdoor in its spyware tools.
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7.
Hulio proposed increasing sales to Israel's western allies, but the November 2021 U S blacklisting of NSO subsequently ended the company's prospects of breaking into the U S market .
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8.
In late 2020, Vice Media published an article in which it reported that NSO Group had closed the Cyprus-based offices of Circles, the company it had acquired in 2014.
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9.
NSO Group was founded in 2010 by Niv Karmi, Omri Lavie, and Shalev Hulio.
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10.
NSO Group pitched its spyware to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which declined to purchase it due to its high cost.
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11.
NSO Group denied involvement in selecting or targeting victims, but did not explicitly deny creating the exploit.
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12.
In June 2019, NSO began setting up a test facility in New Jersey for the FBI which had procured NSO's services, and began testing a version of Pegasus developed for U S government agencies to be used on U S phones.
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13.
Sources told Motherboard that NSO Group leadership held a meeting to prevent similar incidents in the future, and subsequently adopted more rigorous screening of employees that interact with clients.
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14.
In July 2020, Motherboard reported that the US branch of NSO Group was pitching its brand of Pegasus to the US Secret Service during 2018.
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15.
Israeli officials subsequently unsuccessfully attempted to get the blacklisting overturned, and NSO reportedly tried and failed multiple times to meet with the U S Bureau of Industry and Security to attempt to obtain export waivers.
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16.
The undercover agents had been inquiring about their work involving NSO Group, and appeared to be trying to goad the researchers into making anti-Semitic or otherwise damaging remarks.
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17.
In February 2019, Associated Press reported that at least four more individuals - three lawyers involved in lawsuits against NSO Group for alleged sales of NSO spyware to governments with poor human rights records, and one journalist who had been covering said litigation - were being pursued by undercover operatives for their work on NSO.
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