Israel Bans Sales of Spyware to 65 Countries

The spyware named ‘Pegasus’, first detected in 2016 and developed by Israel-based NSO Group, had been on the agenda all over the world, especially a few months ago. Described as the biggest cyber threat to date, the software accesses every single data on anyone’s smartphone, and offers important features such as location tracking and live media listening to its customers. Until today journalists, government officials, business people, activists, etc. People from many groups have been targeted with this software.

According to the shared lists, NSO Group was serving a total of 102 countries for all hacking and surveillance tools, including this software. But now the number of these countries will be much less. Israel’s Ministry of Defense today announced that one of the cybersecurity companies in the country, including the NSO Group, The number of countries that can purchase hacking and spying tools has been reduced to 37. announced.

Only these 37 countries will now be able to trade with Israel-based software companies:

As of today, only Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus (Greek), Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Liechtenstein , Latvia, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States will be able to receive ‘spyware’.

It is believed that the Pegasus application was used before and even in the murder of Cemal Khashoggi, which was committed in the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia, it is thought to have benefited from this software. Saudi Arabia removed from the list seen. On the other hand, it has recently blocked trade with NSO Group and Candiru. The United States is on the list is seen.