On Tuesday, Apple sued NSO, the controversial Israeli intelligence firm that provides governments with systems to spy on the smartphone activities of terrorists and other criminals, accusing it of using Pegasus, a software that can be installed on iOS and Android devices. to spy on the activities of some of its users in the United States. Apple also announced that it will try to stop NSO from using Apple programs from now on, to prevent abuse.
Thanks to the Pegasus spyware, NSO was able to extract messages, photos and emails, record phone calls and secretly activate cameras and microphones on iOS and Android devices. That of Apple is the second cause of this type: in 2019 Facebook had sued NSO accusing it of being responsible for targeted attacks against about 1,400 WhatsApp users. In early November, the US added NSO to its list of companies that cannot purchase technology products from US companies without government approval.
NSO, founded in 2010, has long been suspected of having provided its surveillance systems to foreign governments, which also allegedly used them to spy on journalists, human rights activists, diplomats and business executives. NSO's activities had already been the focus of several journalistic inquiries in recent years, but the latest survey, this summer, had gathered new evidence in this regard.
