FBI probing possible Israeli role in anti-American hacking

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is probing the role of the Israeli cyber surveillance firm NSO Group in suspected intelligence gathering targeting governments as well as American residents and companies, according to a report.

Reuters published a report on the FBI probe citing four individuals familiar with the investigation on Thursday.

According to one person interviewed by the FBI in 2017 and last year, the inquiry was underway by 2017, with officials trying to learn if the NSO obtained any codes needed to hack smartphones from American hackers.

The report also said that the FBI conducted additional interviews with technology industry experts after Facebook launched a complaint against NSO in October last year, according to two individuals who had spoken with FBI or US Justice Department officials.

The Facebook lawsuit blamed the Israeli company of hacking 1,400 users, many of whom it said were journalists, diplomats, human rights activists, political dissidents, and senior government officials.

Citing an unnamed Western official briefed on the probe, the Reuters report said that the FBI was also seeking to understand if US government officials or its allied governments had been victims of attacks employing NSO hacking tools.

The report added that the US inquiry had sought to understand the Israeli spy firm’s business operations, the nature of the technical services it provided to its customers, and its role in specific hacks.

The information can be used to determine to what extent the NSO had knowledge of or was involved in the illegal use of its software, such as unauthorized access to computers and wiretapping practices prohibited by US laws.

The Reuters report added that it was unable to determine what probable hacking targets were among top concerns for US officials and what phase the probe was in.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

The NSO has claimed that it provides products and services only to governments with the intention of carrying out anti-terrorism and anti-criminal operations and that its products can not target US phones, a claim that has been doubted by cyber security experts.

Earlier this month, reports emerged indicating that the NSO’s Pegasus software could have been used by Saudi Arabia to hack the phone of Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in 2018.

Numerous reports have also claimed that governments such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have used spyware provided by the Israeli company to spy on journalists, human rights activists, and dissidents around the globe.

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