Jamal Kahshoggi (Wikipedia)
Israel’s NSO Group, a provider of spyware and other cybersecurity programs, is being sued by the widow of the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, who maintains the firm’s controversial spyware was used by Saudi Arabian agents to find and murder her husband. She filed the civil suit last week in the Northern District of Virginia saying her own phone was infected by the firm’s spyware.
In her lawsuit, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi charged that NSO Group “intentionally targeted” her devices and “caused her immense harm, both through the tragic loss of her husband and through her own loss of safety, privacy, and autonomy.”
According to Reuters, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi alleges that the spyware was placed in her phone while she was detained for a “security check” at the airport in Dubai in 2021.
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NSO Group has not responded to the suit.
Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government. His body was dismembered. Khashoggi was a political dissident who opposed the regime of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He fled the country in 2017 and it is believed he was lured to the consulate in Istanbul based on false promises.
Israel Cybersecurity firm NSO Group develops ways to break through encryptions and security systems. Last July, it was revealed that NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware software aids in the violation of people’s human rights around the world and that the company has known all about this. Specifically, they were charged with helping governments hack the telephones of journalists.
NSO Group was eventually blacklisted by the U.S. government in November 2021. And it was reported that NSO Group Pegasus spyware was used to track American embassy employees in East Africa. Specifically, 11 U.S. Embassy employees working in Uganda had their iPhones hacked by the program.
The company’s activities were even felt in Israel itself. A scandal erupted in the country when a report in Calcalist revealed that the Israel Police had hacked the phones of many Israeli citizens, including politicians, without first acquiring the proper court orders for wiretapping as required by law.
