The infosec apocalypse is nigh

Ed Snowden on the NSO’s malware.

When the Pegasus Project dropped last week, it was both an ordinary and exceptional moment. The report — from Amnesty, Citizenlab, Forbidden Stories, and 80 journalists in 10 countries — documented 50,000 uses of the NSO Group’s Pegasus malware.

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pegasus-project/

The 50,000 targets of NSO’s cyberweapon include politicians, activists and journalists. The Israeli arms-dealer — controlled by Novalpina Capital and Francisco Partners — has gone into full spin mode.

NSO insists that the report is wrong, but also that it’s fine to spy on people, and also that terrorists will murder us all if they aren’t allowed to reap vast fortunes by helping the world’s most brutal dictators figure out whom to kidnap, imprison and murder.

As I say, all of this is rather ordinary. The NSO Group’s bloody hands, immoral practices and vicious retaliation against critics are well established.

It’s been four years since NSO’s assurances that it only sold spying tools to democratic states to hunt terrorists were revealed as lies, when Citizenlab revealed that its weapons targeted Mexican anti-sugar activists (and their children).