Creepy Israeli Spyware Vendor NSO Group Reportedly Sells to U.S. Company at the Worst Possible Time

It appears that Israel-based NSO Group – a notorious peddler of powerful spyware – has been bought by an American company. The news was first reported by Israeli outlet Calcalist and confirmed by TechCrunch.

NSO, best known for its Pegasus phone-hacking malware, has been at the center of surveillance scandals for years. An investor group led by Hollywood producer Robert Symonds is the new owner of the hack-for-hire company, according to Calcalist. The deal, said to be worth “several tens of millions of dollars,” is expected to be finalized “in the coming days, although its completion will require approval from the Defense Ministry’s Defense Export Control Agency (DECA),” the outlet wrote.

NSO spokesman Oded Hershowitz reportedly told TechCrunch that “an American investment group has invested tens of millions of dollars in the company and has gained controlling ownership.” “This investment does not mean that the company is falling out of Israeli regulatory or operational control,” Hershowitz told TechCrunch. “The company’s headquarters and core operations remain in Israel. It remains fully supervised and regulated by the relevant Israeli authorities, including the Ministry of Defense and the Israeli regulatory framework.” Gizmodo has reached out to NSO Group for comment, and we will update this story when we hear back.

NSO had not only had a tough few years; a contract. As early as 2015-2016, the company was mired in controversy due to authoritarian governments purchasing its products. By 2018, Amnesty International was claiming that its employees had been hacked using the company’s malware. In 2019, Facebook and WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO, accusing it of exploiting bugs in its messenger code to allow monitoring of the app’s users. A number of prominent technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and Dell, later joined the lawsuit, several of whom later argued that victims of NSO’s spyware should be able to sue the company for privacy violations. In 2021, Apple filed a lawsuit against it. In the same year, NSO was placed on a federal blacklist that prohibits US companies from providing resources or support to it without formal government approval. Last year, a judge found the company liable in a lawsuit filed by WhatsApp.

Throughout this period, there continued to be a large number of controversies related to the company. There have also been attempts by US companies to buy NSO. In 2022, major US defense contractor L3Harris considered acquiring NSO, but it appears that the Biden administration, which had previously blacklisted the company, dissuaded it from such a purchase. It’s unclear what the spyware company’s future will look like under its new American owners, but it ensures the company has a future, and puts the powerful cyber arsenal in US hands — just in time for Trump’s newly formed police state.