The 11 Ghastly Things I Got out of NSO Group’s iPhone Hack…”You have nothing left to hide.”
by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
September 4, 2016
NSO Group is so secretive it doesn’t even have a website. The malware company was founded in 2010 in Israel with $1.6 million in seed money. Its “most recently-known owner” – as Forbes put it – is private equity firm Francisco Partners in San Francisco which acquired a majority stake in 2014 for $120 million and then tried to sell that stake in November 2015 for $1 billion, “people familiar with the matter” told Reuters at the time.
Reuters also said that the company “has since changed its name several times, most recently calling itself ‘Q.’”
I have not found any evidence that the sale actually happened. At the time, the valuations of unicorns were routinely taken out the back and slashed.
The company makes and sells surveillance malware called Pegasus that governments around the world, or anyone able to buy it and willing to pay the steep price, can use to target a specific user’s iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or Symbian device.
An NSO proposal seen by the New York Times points out that the system gives “unlimited access to a target’s mobile devices” to “remotely and covertly collect information about your target’s relationships, location, phone calls, plans and activities — whenever and wherever they are.” And, “It leaves no traces whatsoever.”
The Rest…HERE
