On another one – Omer Benjakob, Josh Breiner and Avi Scharf Haaretz:

‘A previously unknown Israeli cyberoffense firm is selling advanced spyware and digital surveillance technologies to foreign countries, according to documents obtained by Haaretz.
NFV Systems was exposed during a Defense Ministry investigation into suspicions of the company improperly exporting sensitive technologies. Gulf states are among its clients.
The Defense Ministry’s department for the security of the defense establishment, known in Hebrew by the acronym Malmab, and the department supervising military exports, DECA, announced in February that they have been investigating the company and its executives on suspicion of violating Israel’s defense export law.’

(…)

‘The sale of Israeli-made cyberoffense technology is regulated by the Israeli government. The industry includes a broad range of surveillance and spying tools sold as technology to law enforcement and espionage agencies. Some allow for the tracking of a person’s geographical location, while other, more advanced, systems let the agencies hack into computers, cellphones and even encrypted messaging apps.
They can extract all the information on a smartphone and even covertly turn on the device’s microphone and camera – converting the gadget into a spying device against the phone’s owner. More basic forms of spy technologies allow, for example, the hacking of WiFi or cellular data to intercept a target’s communications.’

(…)

‘In contrast to well-known Israeli cyberoffense firms like NSO Group, Paragon or even Quadream, NFV Systems is completely unknown, even among industry insiders. It does not have a website and its name has never previously been published.
NFV Systems’ documents from 2017 obtained by Haaretz reveal the technologies the firm has sold in the past. It is likely these capabilities have only improved over the years.
NFV claimed its technology was able to pinpoint a person’s geographical location in real time by tracking their SIM card number over cellular networks. The system can also issue an alert when a target person enters or leaves a country or region designated in advance (geofencing). According to the company, the target’s location is also determined based on information siphoned from social media platforms, including WhatsApp.’

(…)

‘Such hacking does not infect the user’s cellphone or computer with spyware (as Pegasus and Predator do), and therefore does not provide access to encrypted communications on apps such as WhatsApp and Signal. But it does have the ability to collect information on unencrypted voice conversations, the documents suggest.
Eitay Mack, an Israeli lawyer who has helped uncover the misuse of Israeli technology and expose defense export issues, said that the Defense Ministry’s oversight department conducts only a handful of investigations each year. A criminal investigation such as the one against NFV is extremely rare, he noted.
He said the oversight department rarely “announces an ongoing investigation it’s conducting unless it involves some important story internationally such as the Israelis who sold loitering munitions to China a few years ago. In such a case, there’s an interest in showing that [the issue] is being dealt with. [The current case] is highly unusual and looks like a PR stunt, but it’s worth trying to understand why [NFV] specifically.”’

(…)

‘NFV Systems, Avgar Noked and David Shaul did not respond to a request for comment.’

Read the article here.

A company that nobody knew it existed, now under investigation for ‘improperly exporting’ spy ware to who knows what country?

(Today NYT ran an article about spyware and the Mexican army. Read it here.

A pr-stunt as explication for why the Defense Ministry leaked this information to the press is a bid too pedestrian to me.
They could have been afraid that sources outside Israel would leak it first and they wanted to show that they are an top of it.

It’s part of a game with a yet unknown third party (country).
We are obsessing with ChatGPT.
Read Chomsky today in NYT.
I would rather focus on spyware.

It appears to fulfill all its promises. If you want a true friend, go and buy Pegasus, you will never be lonesome again.

No, you don’t need to buy it.

Just believe that Pegasus is on your phone and they are listening to you and watching you.

Then watch ‘The Conversation’.

But jest aside, the threat is real.