The CEO and co-founder of NSO Group has backed away from criticism of his embattled cybertech firm amid mounting allegations its Pegasus spyware program has been misused in Israel and around the world.
Stating that many of the most serious claims made against the company were untrue, Shalev Hulio stated that its software was designed to fight terrorism and serious crime, while dismissing its image as a tool primarily was used to suppress freedom around the world.
“It is a cyber weapon. Our first rule was that we would only sell these devices to governments,” Hulio told the company’s high-rise office in Herzliya. “Our second decision was that we would not every government. Will sell – that there were governments that on the first day we could see that we should not sell them … We refused to sell to 90 countries – 90 countries came and asked, and we said no. We sold for maybe 40. ,
Hulio called his criticism of NSO Group’s sale of Pegasus to non-democratic countries “hypocritical”, comparing surveillance technology to military weapons systems.
“There isn’t a country that we’ve sold to, not one … that the US doesn’t sell, or that Israel doesn’t. So it’s a bit hypocritical to say it’s okay to sell F-35s and tanks and drones, but intelligence It is not right to sell the collecting equipment,” he said.
“If we see that [Pegasus] If there is a misuse, or even suspicion that it is being misused, we disconnect the system,” he claimed, adding that this has happened seven times over the years.
A logo adorns a wall at a branch of the Israeli NSO Group company, near the southern Israeli city of Sapir, on August 24, 2021. (Sebastian Skinner/AP)
“I sleep completely soundly at night,” he said.
Hulio recently voiced the US decision to blacklist the NSO Group and another Israeli firm for allegedly engaging in malicious cyber activities.
“Our technology has greatly helped the interests of the United States and national security over the years,” he said. “I think the fact that a company like NSO is on [a US blacklist] There’s an outcry… I’m sure we’ll be taken off that list. I have no doubt.”
Hulio denies that Pegasus was used phone hack French President Emmanuel Macron and other politicians claim to have sparked a flurry of related communications between French and Israeli officials last year.
“It has been proven and verified that no one hacked the French President or French parliamentarians. This issue of Macron and members of [France’s] Parliament is wrong,” he said.
He denied any connection between the products of the NSO Group and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
In this photo taken on December 15, 2014, Jamal Khashoggi is seen at a news conference in Bahrain’s capital Manama. (AFP/Mohammed al-Sheikh)
“Our tools and our technology had nothing to do with the murder, Khashoggi or the people around him in any way. I know this claim has been made, and let me tell you, it is a bald lie,” he said.
On Friday, The New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman calls directly to then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu To obtain renewal of an expired state license for Pegasus in exchange for opening its airspace to Israeli flights. The Israeli Defense Ministry initially refused to renew the license, citing spyware abuse, apparently referring to the case of Khashoggi, who was reportedly tracked down with Pegasus for his murder in 2018. Was.
Hulio said: “Blaming anything that happens on the NSO has become a national pastime. A great deal of the reports are simply untrue, prejudicial, and it’s certainly angering at times. [me] And sometimes disappoints. But in the end… we know the truth.”
“There are never more than 200 goals for Pegasus at any given time. 200 goals. That’s the whole story,” he told the network.
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Asked whether the State of Israel used NSO to sell Pegasus to other countries in the region, he said: “I don’t know. Ask the State of Israel.”
Hulio denied traveling the world with former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, as previously claimed by the report. When asked if Cohen had asked him to sell some of the entities to Pegasus, he did not respond with a smile.
Asked whether the NSO group has made mistakes since its inception, Hulio said, “It is impossible not to make mistakes over a period of 12 years, from which you learn.”
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen attends the Jerusalem Post conference in Jerusalem on October 12, 2021. (Yontan Sindel/Flash90)
According to the network, sources close to the company have acknowledged that players from the Israeli government have actually offered Pegasus to authoritarian rule in the Middle East in exchange for warmer ties or peace agreements.
Cohen did not comment on the matter. Netanyahu’s office said on Friday: “The claim that [then] The fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to foreign leaders and offered them these systems in exchange for political achievement or any other achievement is completely untrue. ,
Hulio was also asked about recent report This has sparked a storm of controversy in Israel, according to which Israel Police used Pegasus to spy on civilians, including anti-Netanyahu protesters and Israelis not suspected of any crime. Police have denied targeting protesters, but have not ruled out using the software in some cases, while maintaining any use was legal and under court supervision.
“As a citizen, if what is written is true, it concerns me personally. But as a citizen, let me tell you that I choose to believe the attorney general, the minister of public safety and the police chief who repeatedly say that these things never happened,” Hulio said.
The attorney general recently launched an investigation into the claims, although he has said he has no current evidence to suggest police misconduct.
Hulio also said that it is “inherent” to Pegasus that it cannot be used on Israeli cellphone numbers.
Left: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks during the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit on December 14, 2022 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Right: Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting of the Likud party in the Knesset on December 13, 2021 in Jerusalem. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace via AP; Jonathan Sindel/Flash 90)
On Apple suing NSO and problems with other media giants, Hulio said: “There is some hypocrisy. These giants, Facebook, Google, Apple, are the only ones who allow end-to-end encryption. He argued that this was causing a real hardship to law enforcement around the world hoping to prevent dangerous crimes.
“On the other hand, you have the extreme cases of terrorists and criminals who must be caught eventually. There is a conflict between the right to privacy, which is extremely important, and the right to national security, which is also super-important. And rightly so. That’s the logic.”
He continued: “As a father, do you really want someone to harass your daughter online, or heaven forbid really bother her… you just want her to be able to travel safely on the bus. You want tools like this. Enough of this hypocrisy,” he said.
The network said NSO already has technology that goes even further than Pegasus – technology that not only eliminates device information but also analyzes it. The report says that within seconds, it can accurately map communication connections.
NSO’s Leos Michelson, VP of analytics product line, explained that if “patterns” of communication change—such as short or long calls between two people in habitual contact—it shows that “something is wrong.”
In this file photo taken on August 28, 2016, an Israeli woman uses her iPhone in front of the Israeli NSO Group building in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. (Jack Guez/AFP)
Channel 12 was also given access to three of the company’s 600 employees. When asked if they were embarrassed to work there because of the bad press, one employee said, “Not at all… we walk around with shirts emblazoned with the company logo,” and “proud of the firm’s work”. expressed.
Michelson acknowledged that “becoming an NSO employee has not been easy over the past year,” but added that he would not be there if he felt the firm was not operating legitimately.
seen in recent months Two senior officers of NSO including its chairman departedAsher Levy, although Levy has insisted that his departure was planned months in advance and was not linked to the recent turmoil.
Hulio said he founded the company with two friends, initially to provide technical support for phones remotely. It was only later that the trio realized that their technology could be used for intelligence purposes.
Asked what he would have said 12 years ago if he had been told that the company’s name was known to the world, Hulio said: “I would have said you were crazy.”
But, he added, “unless there is another solution to crime and terror, these technologies will have no expiration date.”
“I have come here to stay. We, the NSO, are here to stay,” he said.