A founder of the Israeli cyber-intel company, the NSO, denied that his firm’s tracking technology was used to monitor slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, however, he also refused to either confirm or deny sale of the software to Riyadh, the Times of Israel reported.
“There was no use on Khashoggi, including listening, monitoring, tracking, collecting info with any product or technology of NSO,” Shalev Hulio said during an interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-based Washington Post journalist from Saudi Arabia who had become a critic of the kingdom's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
After producing various contradictory explanations, Riyadh acknowledged that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate building, blaming the act on a botched rendition operation.
Khashoggi did not refrain from criticizing bin Salman in over 400 WhatsApp messages with his friend and activist Omar Abdulaziz in which the pair discussed opposition projects, according to a CNN report.
"The more victims he eats, the more he wants. I will not be surprised if the oppression will reach even those who are cheering him on," Khashoggi said in a message sent in May 2018.
"He loves force, oppression and needs to show them off," Khashoggi wrote about Salman, "but tyranny has no logic."
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab noted that Abdulaziz’s phone was hacked by military-grade spyware.
“Israeli software only used against criminals”
Hulio went on to say that the Pegasus phone tracking software, which deals with governments alone, is only used against terrorists and criminals.
“In the last half year the company’s products have been part of thwarting several large terror attacks in Europe, both with car bombs and suicide bombers,” he said.
However, a Toronto-based research organization Citizen Lab's in September 2018 reported that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain are among the countries where the Israeli-made mobile phone spyware program Pegasus has been extensively used.
The UAE has tapped the phone of the Qatari emir, a chief editor of a London-based newspaper and a powerful Saudi prince, according to the New York Times.
“A government operator of Pegasus must convince the target to click on a specially crafted exploit link, which, when clicked, delivers a chain of zero-day exploits to penetrate security features on the phone and installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission,” the Citizen Lab’s report said.
“Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus is installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators’ commands, and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps. The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity,” the report added.
