{"id":42907,"date":"2021-12-04T11:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-12-04T19:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=42907"},"modified":"2021-12-06T11:02:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T19:02:19","slug":"nso-group-in-hot-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=42907","title":{"rendered":"NSO Group in hot water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The phones of at least nine State Department employees were recently hacked through the use of spyware from Israeli company NSO Group, a report published Friday found.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/erbpjvdlqrrfcvcrftbqqfppqdfwrdrkkhqlvzwryhszrp_rklcggnrnpcvnwgtctnr.html?a=&amp;b=45130\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/erbpjvdlqrrfcvcrftbqqfppqdfwrdrkkhqlvzwryhszrp_rklcggnrnpcvnwgtctnr.html?a%3D%26b%3D45130&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638901729059000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Bddsywi1zVwJ9uwyqza2Q\">Reuters cited four people<\/a>\u00a0\u201cfamiliar with the matter\u201d in reporting that iPhones of the employees were hacked over the past several months. The individuals targeted were based in Uganda or working on issues involving Uganda.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Company responds:\u00a0<\/strong>NSO Group disputed the findings, with a spokesperson telling The Hill in a statement Friday that while the company had taken steps to crack down on the customers involved in targeting the employees \u2014 who Reuters said it wasn&#8217;t able to identify \u2014 NSO had no reason to believe its products were involved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce the inquiry was received, and before any investigation under our compliance policy, we have decided to immediately terminate relevant customers\u2019 access to the system, due to the severity of the allegations,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cTo this point, we haven\u2019t received any information nor the phone numbers, nor any indication that NSO\u2019s tools were used in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Government responds:<\/strong>\u00a0A spokesperson for the State Department declined to confirm the hacking efforts to The Hill on Friday, but stressed that \u201cgenerally speaking the Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to ensure information is protected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both NSO Group and Israeli company Candiru were added to the Commerce Department\u2019s Entity List last month, effectively\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/sbclwzjfpbbtgzgbtcmpptllpjthbjbddkpfzshbvkrsbp_rklcggnrnpcvnwgtctnr.html?a=&amp;b=45130\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/sbclwzjfpbbtgzgbtcmpptllpjthbjbddkpfzshbvkrsbp_rklcggnrnpcvnwgtctnr.html?a%3D%26b%3D45130&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638901729059000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3kma58JwZGxeFa4caxgnP3\">blacklisting the use<\/a>\u00a0of the companies\u2019 products. The step was taken due to allegations that both NSO Group and Candiru had developed spyware programs and sold them to foreign governments to target individuals including dissidents and journalists, allegations that NSO Group has pushed back against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The phones of at least nine&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42908,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42907\/revisions\/42908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}