The NSO Group which is best known for their Pegasus spyware for iOS is in deep trouble thanks to being blacklisted by the US and being sued by Apple among other issues. And that may make it far more dangerous than it already is. I say that because of this Financial Times story which walks through their challenges to meet payroll last November, which lead to their CEO deciding to go down an even darker path than the one that they are already on:
Faced with an imminent cash crunch so severe that Israel’s NSO Group, manufacturer of the cyberweapon Pegasus, could miss its November 2021 payroll, Shalev Hulio had a startling suggestion.
The foul-mouthed CEO told a team representing the company’s majority owners in New York that month: why not start selling again to risky clients?
By “risky” he means selling to countries that don’t have great human rights records. Though, given their past history where they have been caught selling to countries that don’t have great human rights records, this likely means that anyone and everyone can buy Pegasus and they won’t bother hiding it. That way The NSO Group has cash coming in as current they don’t have cash coming in.
Unsurprisingly, those who backed the company reacted with alarm, and this made their CEO come up with a plan b:
In recent months, Hulio has come up with a new plan dubbed the “phoenix plan” by company insiders. The idea is to split NSO’s greatest assets from its greatest liabilities — this meant separating the code behind Pegasus and company engineers who are highly paid graduates of Israel’s elite military intelligence units, from the clients that have drawn the ire of the US and human rights groups.
Hulio and a group of creditors hope that by spinning out a new entity that houses the code and engineers, it can sidestep the commerce department’s blacklist, especially if a new owner were a top US defence contractor.
I’m not sure if any US defence contractor would want to have anything to do with these guys. But I won’t rule it out as I am sure that there are many in the US who would want to use this tech. But it illustrates that Pegasus who I considered to be dangerous already is about to get more dangerous because they are desperate. And that’s bad news for all of us.
Related
This entry was posted on June 1, 2022 at 9:07 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The NSO Group’s Cash Crunch Is Making It Far More Dangerous To All Of Us
The NSO Group which is best known for their Pegasus spyware for iOS is in deep trouble thanks to being blacklisted by the US and being sued by Apple among other issues. And that may make it far more dangerous than it already is. I say that because of this Financial Times story which walks through their challenges to meet payroll last November, which lead to their CEO deciding to go down an even darker path than the one that they are already on:
Faced with an imminent cash crunch so severe that Israel’s NSO Group, manufacturer of the cyberweapon Pegasus, could miss its November 2021 payroll, Shalev Hulio had a startling suggestion.
The foul-mouthed CEO told a team representing the company’s majority owners in New York that month: why not start selling again to risky clients?
By “risky” he means selling to countries that don’t have great human rights records. Though, given their past history where they have been caught selling to countries that don’t have great human rights records, this likely means that anyone and everyone can buy Pegasus and they won’t bother hiding it. That way The NSO Group has cash coming in as current they don’t have cash coming in.
Unsurprisingly, those who backed the company reacted with alarm, and this made their CEO come up with a plan b:
In recent months, Hulio has come up with a new plan dubbed the “phoenix plan” by company insiders. The idea is to split NSO’s greatest assets from its greatest liabilities — this meant separating the code behind Pegasus and company engineers who are highly paid graduates of Israel’s elite military intelligence units, from the clients that have drawn the ire of the US and human rights groups.
Hulio and a group of creditors hope that by spinning out a new entity that houses the code and engineers, it can sidestep the commerce department’s blacklist, especially if a new owner were a top US defence contractor.
I’m not sure if any US defence contractor would want to have anything to do with these guys. But I won’t rule it out as I am sure that there are many in the US who would want to use this tech. But it illustrates that Pegasus who I considered to be dangerous already is about to get more dangerous because they are desperate. And that’s bad news for all of us.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on June 1, 2022 at 9:07 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.