Another blow to the Israeli cyber company NSO Group.
Technology giant Apple has filed a lawsuit against the company in a U.S. court on Tuesday over alleged alleged hacking by NSO customers of its devices and is also seeking monetary compensation.
In addition, Apple sought in the lawsuit a permanent restraining order prohibiting NSO from accessing any software, services and devices belonging to the American giant to prevent similar cases of alleged misuse.
Apple claimed in the lawsuit that NSO used "efforts to harm Apple customers in 2021" and that "U.S. citizens were being monitored by NSO spyware on their mobile devices:"
It further claimed that the Israeli company had created more than 100 fake users of Apple users to carry out the alleged attacks.
As you may recall, a project was recently published by several media outlets in which there were indications that NSO's Pegasus software was involved in tracking dozens of journalists, human rights activists and political leaders, although it is unclear if such was actually used and how aware NSO Group was.
Among the names that came up was also French President Emmanuel Macron, which caused diplomatic tensions with Israel, although recently it seems that the two countries have agreed to straighten things out and examine the issue jointly.
In light of this activity, the US Department of Commerce has announced that the two Israeli companies NSO Group and Candiru will be added to the blacklist of commercial entities because they are engaged in "activities contrary to the interests of national security and US foreign states" and will not be able to operate under US export related.
As you may recall, from the comprehensive investigation, which was published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, among others, there were indications that customers of the Israeli cyber company had abused the Pegasus surveillance software.
Although the investigation said that only among 37 devices of various journalists and activists were detected signs of burglary allegedly indicative of actual attempt or burglary, investigators also found a list of 50,000 different numbers that may have been in the company's customers.
The investigation also claimed that the software was used to track the women who were close to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashukji before he was murdered.
