A brochure and e-mails obtained by Motherboard showed the
attempts of West Bridge, the American arm of the Israeli spy company, NSO, to
sell a spy device called "Phantom" to US policemen. This news is the
strongest evidence yet of an Israeli spy company that sells piracy programs to
authoritarian governments to enter the American market, and the American police
desire to obtain such tools shows, ...
A
brochure and e-mails obtained by Motherboard showed the attempts of West
Bridge, the American arm of the Israeli spy company, NSO, to sell a spy device
called "Phantom" to US policemen.
This news is the
strongest evidence yet of an Israeli spy company that sells piracy programs to
authoritarian governments to enter the American market, and the American police
desire to obtain such tools shows, as a law enforcement official described the
piracy technology as "wonderful."
The correspondence
obtained by the site began in August 2016 when a Westbridge employee sent an
email to the San Diego Police Department offering information about Phantom,
which he described as a "mobile intelligence system that would be a great
addition to your investigation offices."
"Convert your
target smartphone into a goldmine of information," says a phantom booklet.
The booklet bears the name of Westbridge, the North American subsidiary of the
NSO Group.
"After penetrating
the phone remotely, Phantom can withdraw the target's emails, text messages and
contact list, as well as track its location, operate the device's microphone
and take pictures using its camera," the booklet said.
A former employee of NSO
told Motherboard that the Phantom is only the trade name of the notorious
Israeli company program, "Pegasus" when the company tried to market
it in the United States, a phone penetration tool that the company sold to
several countries - including United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Saudi Arabia -
millions of dollars, and Saudi Arabia has used this software to monitor
colleagues of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"At the time, the
attack from Phantom was running with one click except for older BlackBerry
devices," the former employee added.
A single click attack
requires the target to click on something a customer sends to the phone, a link
that is delivered via text message for example, but now the attack does not
require any interaction from the target.
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| Two New York city police men |
The US Police and Spyware
The brochure states that the system supports iPhone and various
other phone models from manufacturers such as Samsung, and it can
"overcome encryption operations, communications protocols, and any
obstacle in the complex world of communications."
David Meyer, a San Diego
police sergeant, then told West Bridge in an email that the piracy system
"looks great," and the employee of the company offered to provide a
personal explanation of the system, according to the emails.
"San Diego Police
Department often engages in conversations with sellers trying to sell a product
or service so that we can provide the highest quality of police services,"
Lieutenant Sean Takeuchi - a San Diego Police Department's media official -
told MotherBoard in an e-mail. To our societies, the talks occur routinely, and
in 2016 it was the role of Sergeant Meyer to evaluate the sellers who contacted
us, "he explained, and that technology is only used after obtaining
approval from the legal authority.
John Scott Ryleton, a
researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who tracked the use
of "NSO" by other countries, sees that communication "This may
be the tip of the iceberg," and said, "The local police use secret
piracy technology." It is the worst scenario that worries us all, local
laws and oversight mechanisms do not exist, so abuse will be confirmed. "
In its brochure,
"West Bridge" stressed its relations with the United States, noting
that its headquarters is located in Bethesda (Maryland).
The company attempted at
some point to acquire another American company because of its sales relations
with the US government, and previously offered its piracy technology to the US
Drug Enforcement Administration, but the agency did not purchase the product
because it was too expensive, according to previously obtained internal emails.
This appears to be the
only reason why the San Diego Police Department did not purchase NSO
technology. Sergeant Meyer said in his email, "We simply don't have that
kind of money going forward with such a huge project."
The
"NSO" had previously confirmed that Pegasus cannot be used to target
US phone numbers.
"We confirm
previous statements that our products sold to foreign countries cannot be used
for cyber surveillance within the United States, and no customer has ever been
given the technology to target phones with US numbers," the group's
spokesman said in a statement to Mother Board.
This
incident comes at a time when the "NSO" is involved in a lawsuit with
Facebook after it exploited a security vulnerability in WhatsApp that allowed
the Israeli company clients to penetrate the updated devices completely by
ordering the victim's phone only, and Facebook recently indicated how to use
the Pegasus system of servers in The United States to direct attacks.
Although NSO says that
the Pegasus system is intended to deal with cases of terrorism and serious
crimes, the company's Israeli customers have used the company's technology to
target political opponents, journalists, critics and human rights defenders,
and in one case someone has used piracy technology to target a lawyer working
in a case Civil against the company.
Motherboard revealed last month that an NSO employee had been
able to use the Pegasus program installed by a company customer in the United
Arab Emirates to spy on his girlfriend.
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