The NSO Group calls it “wrong” and “false” that the published list is related to Pegasus objectives. The NSO Group, the owner of Pegasus spyware, has called this Wednesday “wrong” and “false” that the names on the list published by the media consortium Forbidden Stories is “necessarily” related to an objective or potential objective of the program. computer scientist. “Any claim that a name on the list is necessarily related to a target or potential target of Pegasus is wrong and false,” the group NSO said.
Israel’s NSO Group and its Pegasus malware have been in the headlines since at least 2016, when groups of researchers accused it of helping spy on a dissident in the United Arab Emirates. The extent of Pegasus use was reported by The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde and other media outlets that collaborated in an investigation into a data breach.
The leak concerns more than 50,000 smartphone numbers believed to have been identified as belonging to persons of concern by NSO Group’s clientele since 2016, the publications said. The list includes numbers of journalists from media from around the world, such as Agence France-Presse, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, Radio Free Europe, Mediapart, El País, Associated Press , Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters and Voice of America, The Guardian said. The Post said 15,000 of the phone numbers were in Mexico and included those of politicians, union leaders, journalists and government critics. The list includes the number of a Mexican freelance journalist who was later killed in a car wash. His phone was never found and it is unclear if it was hacked.
In a statement released Sunday, the NSO Group said the Forbidden Stories report is “full of erroneous assumptions and unsubstantiated theories,” and threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against the organization. “As NSO has previously stated, our technology is in no way related to the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” the company said.
See also:
Molerats, A Troubled Cybercriminal Group
Prometheus and Grief, 2 New Ransomware Groups
