CEO of Blacklisted Israeli Spyware Maker NSO Steps Down

guest · Aug 22, 2022

Spyware company NSO downsizing as preparation for growth, says outgoing CEO
August 22, 2022

The CEO of NSO Group, the Israeli company behind the Pegasus spyware, will step down as part of a restructuring plan that will also cut 100 jobs.

NSO Group made the announcement on Sunday, also saying it is entering its "next phase of growth," which will now focus sales on countries belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance.

"[The reorganization] will examine all aspects of its business, including streamlining its operations to ensure NSO remains one of the world's leading high-tech cyber intelligence companies, focusing on NATO-member countries," said an NSO Group's spokesperson.
The company is mainly known for an investigation in July 2021 that revealed its Pegasus spyware was sold to governments worldwide and used against human rights activists, reporters and other groups.
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Crucially, while NSO is privately owned, the Ministry of Defense in Israel must preapprove any export of cyberwarfare technologies, leading privacy activists and political commentators alike to say Israel's political interests influenced Pegasus sales to governments with records of human rights abuses.

Although NSO always denied any wrongdoing in licensing its technologies, the company was added to a US export blacklist last year to prevent it from buying components from American companies.
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guest · Aug 23, 2022

Will spyware maker NSO Group's struggles reduce use of its eavesdropping tech? Critics doubt it.
August 22, 2022

Embattled Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group announced a major reorganization Sunday — replacing its longtime CEO and laying off roughly 100 of its 700 employees — but experts who track the growing trade in surveillance technology say that’s unlikely to curtail deployment of the company’s technology designed to secretly monitor its targets.

“Such changes will not address the ongoing absence of accountability,” said Claudio Guarnieri, the head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, one of several organizations that has tracked and exposed global digital surveillance enabled by NSO Group’s spyware technology.
“The piling discoveries of unlawful surveillance of activists, journalists and other members of civil society show a rotten mercenary spyware industry, and a moratorium of their sales is as urgent now as ever,” Guarnieri told CyberScoop.
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The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, but told The Washington Post Sunday that the resignation of CEO Shalev Hulio was part of a broader reorganization that includes plans to market the firm’s cutting-edge technology to NATO countries.

The firm “will examine all aspects of its business, including streamlining operations to ensure NSO remains one of the world’s leading high-tech cyber intelligence companies,” the company said in a statement to the Post.
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“NSO’s business strategy these days seems to be: hold on and hope for an acquisition miracle, or a change of government,” Scott-Railton told CyberScoop Monday. “We’ve heard for months that they are running low on cash, and big layoffs and a shakeup seem to speak to that.”

Scott-Railton is also skeptical that the company’s announced reforms will amount to much.

“NSO’s short corporate history is littered with reorganizations that weren’t, diligence that wasn’t turnarounds that didn’t, and reforms that went nowhere,” he said. “I don’t see any reason this will be different.”
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CEO of Blacklisted Israeli Spyware Maker NSO Steps Down

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