NSO Spyware Is On US Trade Blacklist

The US Department of Commerce has recently blacklisted two Israeli phone spyware companies, NSO Group and Candiru, adding them to the list of foreign companies that engage in malicious cyber activities. The ban is the biggest step taken by the US so far  to curb abuses in the global market for spyware, which is for all practical purposes, is unregulated. 

The move by the Commerce Department was driven by NSO’s export around the world of a sophisticated surveillance system known as Pegasus, which can be remotely implanted in smartphones.

NSO Group and the lesser-known Candiru, considered its competitor in the cyber-surveillance market, were accused of providing spyware software to governments that was ultimately turned on journalists and activists.
“These tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression, which is the practice of authoritarian governments targeting dissidents, journalists and activists outside of their sovereign borders to silence dissent,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo said in a statement.“The United States is committed to aggressively using export controls to hold companies accountable that develop, traffic, or use technologies to conduct malicious activities that threaten the cybersecurity of members of civil society, dissidents, government officials, and organisations here and abroad.”

Pegasus military-grade spyware developed and sold by Israel's NSO Group has emerged as a formidable cyber weapon, used by some of its more autocratic customers in the Middle East to target a wide range of people, not just criminals and terrorists. Pegasus has reportedly been used by nation states including UAE, Morocco and Saudi Arabia to target the phones of rights activists and journalists.

NSO Group said it was "dismayed" by the decision, adding that its technology helped maintain US national security by "preventing terrorism and crime". It has long maintained that its software is sold only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records. "We look forward to presenting the full information regarding how we have the world's most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based on the American values we deeply share, which already resulted in multiple terminations of contacts with government agencies that misused our products," the company said in a statement.

US officials said that NSO Group and another Israeli firm, Candiru, had acted "contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States".

Positive Technologies of Russia, and Computer Security Initiative Consultancy from Singapore, were also listed and the Department of Commerce said they trafficked in cyber tools used to gain unauthorised access to computer networks.

Details about the alleged use of Pegasus by NSO Group clients to target British citizens came to light in July after journalists working with cyber security campaigners, including Amnesty International, obtained a leaked database of 50,000 phone numbers selected by NSO Group clients. 

The numbers were linked to phones used by politicians, human rights defenders and journalists and forensic analysis of some of the devices found evidence that Pegasus software had been installed on them.

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