Israel limits the number of countries it will sell Pegasus to. Poland withdrew from the list

According to the Israeli newspaper, Calcalist, the new list It will impede the activities of IT companies in countries “with authoritarian regimes or where violations of civil rights are suspected.”

The list includes: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg. Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Calcalist notes that Morocco, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pulled out of the list to buy NSO Group products such as Pegasus.

CyberDefence24.pl in turn refers to this Poland and Hungary also disappeared from the list.

The Israeli newspaper notes that it is not yet clear why the list has been reduced. Journalists speculate that the Israeli Defense Ministry had prior knowledge of the intentions of the US authorities to put two companies – NSO and Candiru – on a “blacklist” of companies whose interests conflict with US national security. Apple also sued NSO Group for infecting its devices.

One of the most famous Israeli electronic espionage tools is Pegasus, developed by the NSO Group. Officially, it was created to fight terrorism. If the phone is infected with it, the software is able to access the entire content of the device, including the recordings, email and the content of the conversations we have in instant messages. Pegasus can also control the speaker and the camera, allowing you to listen in on conversations continuously and follow the picture from the immediate surroundings.

However, it soon became clear that the Pegasus system is also used to control opponents of totalitarian regimes. According to a press investigation published by the NGO Forbidden Stories, Up to 200 journalists can be illegally probed with Pegasus.

There are also suspicions that the victim of the program was Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. His phone may have been infected by Saudis, and it is possible that the virus was sent in a WhatsApp message from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In September 2018, CitizenLab published a report listing operators from countries where the monitored networks were tracked with Pegasus. There were networks from Poland.

According to TVN24.pl, a month and a half before the discovery of Pegasus activity in Poland, the Central Anti-Corruption Office signed an invoice for “the purchase of special technical measures for the detection and prevention of crime”.

Of course, neither the Polish authorities nor the authorities recognized the purchase of the Pegasus system. The Central Anti-Corruption OfficeIt “didn’t buy any system of mass surveillance of the Poles.” However, this is a very evasive advertisement, because Pegasus does not provide “mass” monitoring – however, it can infect the individual devices of certain people.

In mid-2020, “Rzeczpospolita” revealed that the main evidence in the investigation against Sławomir Nowak They rely on “secure conversations on encrypted messages” acquired through Pegasus. The former Minister of Transport and the former head of the Ukrainian Road Agency Ukrawtodor is suspected of demanding and accepting material and personal benefits in exchange for awarding contracts to private entities for the construction and repair of roads in Ukraine, as well as money laundering.

Yesterday, Attorney General Ewa Warsawsek of the Lakes Super Omnia Association of Prosecutors announced on Twitter that she had received a warning from Apple that her device could be infected.

You just got an alert An apple About a possible cyber attack on my phone by state services. Noting that I may be targeted for what I do or who I am. I will take the warning seriously because it has been preceded by other incidents – I wrote.