French President Emmanuel Macron's mobile phone was targeted by Morocco, a former French colony.
A phone number that Macron has used regularly since 2017 is on the surveillance list of Moroccan intelligence services. Among the French dignitaries who were being spied on were former Prime Minister Edouard Phillips and 14 ministers, in addition to President Macron.
Let the former colony "devour the lord", "milk law" can be said to reach a new height.
However, Moroccan intelligence services really did not specifically target France. In addition to French dignitaries, they are also targeted at famous figures such as King Mohammed VI of Morocco and other members of the royal family, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, president of the European Council Michel.
After the matter was exposed, Macron quickly changed his mobile phone and phone number, and other relevant people immediately took corresponding measures.
Is it said that Moroccan black technology has been so great that it has reached such a point in the sky?
The Moroccan government was the first to deny it, calling the allegations "baseless" and, on July 22, the third day of the incident, filed a defamation lawsuit against the French nonprofit journalist group Forbidden Stories and the London-based NGO Amnesty International, after the two groups first made false accusations against Morocco.
This "defendant becomes the plaintiff", look at the people in the fog to see the flowers are confused, Morocco has not spied on Macron, at present, only the news, there is no real hammer.
But one thing is certain, assuming the allegations are true, it's not Morocco that is eye-catching, but the Israeli mobile phone spy software pegasus that Morocco is accused of using, and the Israeli software surveillance company NSO behind it.
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Israel's mobile spy software "Pegasus" has customers who can have more than one Moroccan.
According to a survey result, in the database leaked by Pegasus, there are more than 300 Indian mobile phone numbers that may be monitored, and the owners of these mobile phone numbers are extremely unusual, basically from all walks of life, including Indian ministers, opposition leaders, journalists, businessmen and so on.
Among them, there are more than 40 journalists, including "top journalists" of india's major media such as The Times of India and Hindustan Times, 3 "major opposition figures", 2 current ministers of the Modi government and officials of security agencies.
The timing of journalists being on the surveillance list is also interesting. The name of former Indian Express reporter Singh appeared on the surveillance list in 2018 when he was investigating India's purchase of Rafale fighter jets from France.
An editor of the cable website appeared on the list before publishing reports about the business relationship of the son of India's interior minister, Amit Shah, who was also investigating the business dealings of India's minister of commerce and industry, Piyush Goyar, with a businessman.
It can be seen that most of these monitored objects are journalists who want to seek the truth and expose the shady scenes, as well as some dissidents.
But the Indian and Moroccan governments reacted in the same way to allegations that the Pegasus software was used to eavesdrop on journalists and dissidents, saying that the media 's allegations that the Indian government's surveillance of specific groups of people " have no specific basis or facts related to it " .
Needless to say, the attitude of other countries on the list that use "Pegasus" is the same, and all of them deny this.
The results of the survey show that NSO's customers, the countries that bought pegasus spyware, are mainly from 11 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Togo and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Who is the "target" of NSO's listening customers?
On the list of potential surveillance by the Pegasus software, there are about 50,000 phone numbers involving presidents, prime ministers, key officials, business people, religious leaders, academics, NGO employees, unionists, and more in a number of countries.
But surveillance at the level of national leaders has attracted the most widespread attention.
The investigation shows that the Rwandan government may spy on South African President Ramaphosa from 2019, and the Indian government may spy on Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan from 2019.
Despite their close ties to Egypt, saudi arabia and the UNITED ARAB emirates may be eyeing senior Egyptian officials, including Prime Minister Madebly, and Iraqi President Barham.
The UAE may also have set its sights on Lebanon's then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri in 2018 and 2019. Former Ugandan Prime Minister Rugunda and former Algerian Prime Minister Bedoği may also be spied upon while in office.
However, the phone numbers that appear on the listening list do not mean that they have been hacked, and may only be some potential targets of NSO customers.
The survey unit conducted further verification of 67 of the smart phones that may have been attacked, and the results showed that 23 were successfully compromised, 14 phones showed signs of being compromised, and the remaining 30 showed no signs of being compromised.
According to the proportion of sample surveys, the proportion of successful invasions is about 30%, and of the 50,000 telephones covering the world, 15,000 may be successfully invaded, which is a very serious surveillance incident.
"Pegasus" this spyware, in the hacking community should be regarded as a household name, should be the world's most powerful spyware, but also the main product of NSO.
The software can easily hack into the most commonly used mobile devices, including Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Symbian systems, and its tracking software and hardware can be installed in a variety of ways, easily intercepting all kinds of messages, pictures, videos, email content, call logs in the phone, and secretly turning on the microphone for real-time recording.
Earlier, when the software first came out, a malicious link would be sent to the user when it was invaded, and the user would be "hit" as long as he clicked.
However, at present, the software has been upgraded, without phishing URLs, it can still carry out targeted espionage activities on targets, and has the "comprehensive ability" of tracking, monitoring and spy infiltration.
Of course, the cost of using this software is also extremely high.
According to the New York Times, an NSO business plan shows that the cost of monitoring 10 Apple or Android users is $650,000; the cost of monitoring 5 BlackBerry users is $500,000; the cost of monitoring five Symbian users is $300,000, and the installation fee is also calculated, with an average of about $50,000 per installation.
In addition, the annual system maintenance cost is calculated separately, which is about 17% of the total price.
Such a calculation, the rush is all money, NSO can be said to be a million profits, as far as the results of the current survey are concerned, NSO has also entered hundreds of millions of dollars.
Didn't Thomas Joseph Downing say: "If there is 10% profit, capital is guaranteed to be used everywhere; with 20% profit, capital can be active; with 50% profit, capital will take risks; for 100% profit, capital will dare to trample on all human laws; with more than 300% profit, capital will dare to commit any crime, even risk hanging." ”
Under such huge profits, NSO, as the world's top network arms dealer, really has nothing to dare to do.
The 50,000 phone numbers listed on the monitoring list by "Pegasus" cover more than 50 countries around the world, and if they are not contained and controlled, it is conceivable that more countries will be brutally attacked by "Pegasus" in the future.
So seeing this, some people will be curious, the NSO that created this software, hand and eye to the sky to such a point, what kind of enterprise and organization is this?
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Open NSO's corporate webpage, and in the Corporate Presentation section, NSO describes that its software is primarily designed to deal with criminals and terrorists, is designed to gather intelligence against criminal networks and terrorism, and is only available to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records.
In fact, when the NSO was first established, it could really be said to be used to fight crime.
NSO was founded in 2008, and the name of the company is simply and crudely taken from the initials of the three founders: Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie.
(Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie)
At the beginning of NSO's establishment, it was the beginning of the rise of smart phones, when people were still very unfamiliar with smartphones, and mobile phone companies needed to spend a lot of time in person to guide customers on how to install various basic programs.
In order to save time and effort, NSO set up a set of programs at that time, allowing mobile phone companies to send links to customers, through which companies can remotely access customers' mobile phones and install programs to remotely control and maintain customers' devices.
Although the scope of the NSO's business was small at the time, the technology used was very advanced and high-end at the time, because its team recruited former members of the most powerful branch of the Israeli intelligence agency, The 8200 Force (equivalent to the US NSA).
With their strong technology and word of mouth, NSOs grew more and more famous, until one day, a European intelligence agency found them and dialed their phone:
"Why don't you use this technology to gather intelligence?"
After a question, the other party then made it clear that with the popularity of smartphones and encrypted communication technology, more and more crime and terrorists communicate through unbreakable encrypted channels, which makes it extremely difficult for their intelligence agencies to monitor the activities of criminals.
After some research, NSO provided the other party with a set of solutions: by deciphering communication data, it launched a hacking attack on the terminal of the communication system, that is, the mobile phone.
At this point, the NSO discovered a new wealth password and began to embark on the road of making a fortune by selling "cyber arms" to government agencies.
By 2011, NSO had developed the first generation of mobile surveillance tools, the aforementioned Pegasus, which could unobstructed large amounts of previously inaccessible data from mobile phones — including phones, texts, emails, contacts, locations, and any data transmitted on social software like Facebook.
Through continuous upgrading, this spy software has blossomed all over the world and has been purchased and used by many governments around the world.
Pegasus's first customer was the Mexican government.
The Mexican government first bought Pegasus to fight crime, mainly to catch drug lords, and the technology and software provided by the NSO did play an important role in this regard, usually by sending false links to drug cartels and then obtaining relevant information to infiltrate them.
Before the big drug lord Guzman was successfully captured, there was a lot of credit from the NSO.
(Guzman captured)
Mexico tasted the sweetness and was out of control, not only the first customer of the "Pegasus" software, but also a large customer of NSO, which is still the main importer of this spyware, of course, it is also the "hardest hit area" of this eavesdropping software activity.
In the results of the pegasus survey, 15,000 of the 50,000 phone numbers on the surveillance list came from Mexico, accounting for a third of the total.
Between 2016 and 2017, almost all Mexican political parties had politicians "on the list," with at least 45 current (former) governors in 32 states across the country, as well as a large number of judges, doctors, guild people, journalists, lawyers, and diplomats on the surveillance list, according to the list.
The software, which has been widely abused in Mexico, has long been more than limited to the original function of catching drug lords. The information obtained through eavesdropping can easily flow into the hands of private individuals (criminal gangs or commercial organizations) and was once a secret weapon used by the previous Mexican government to spy on competitors and fight opponents.
The list of surveillance spies included Mexico's current president, López López, and a large number of close associates, former President Felipe Calderon (who was in office from 2006 to 2012) and his wife.
in López
In the 2018 election, former Mexican President Nieto lost to the former "defeated general" López. As a result, López has been monitored for a long time by the previous government, and at least 50 people in López's inner circle have been "stalked", including wives and children, brothers, chiefs of staff, assistants, drivers, cardiovascular doctors, and even the manager of the baseball team that López attends in his spare time.
So it's no wonder why the private conversations of López's son and senior members of the party are often leaked and exposed by the media.
In the Middle East, pegasus software is even more widely used, and in 2016, the UAE authorities relied on the software after the arrest of Ahmed Mansour, a prominent human rights activist in the UNITED Arab Emirates.
Of course, in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which shocked the world, NSO's "Pegasus" played a key role in it.
At that time, Khashoggi's friend Abdul Aziz's mobile phone was infected with "Pegasus", and when the two communicated through the social networking app WhatsApp, although the dialogue was protected by the encryption of the software, in fact, the conversation between the two had long been "hacked".
Khashoggi's dialogue with him has been monitored as a result, and the content of the dialogue, location information, and everything else is under the control of the Saudi government.
(Khashoggi and Abdul Aziz dialogue)
Because after any mobile phone is infected with "Pegasus", all the data, information, and even satellite positioning data stored in the mobile phone will be visible to hackers, where the owner of the mobile phone is, who to talk to, and what to talk about is no longer a secret.
What is even more infuriating is that in the "Pegasus" monitor list disclosed this time, Khashoggi's fiancée is also listed, which shows the wide range of monitoring of this software.
After Khashoggi's murder, Snowden spoke up for him and denounced the NSO: "Based on the evidence we have, the NSO Group is currently the worst company in the world, and they sell these stolen tools to violate the human rights of dissidents, opponents and activists." ”
After the scandal of NSO's "Pegasus" software monitoring the world, Snowden called it an annual event, calling for a total suspension of the software.
However, if you want to stop selling the software, you must first ask the Israeli government if it agrees.
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After Khashoggi's murder, his friend Abdul Aziz filed a lawsuit against Pegasus software and the Israeli NSO Group, accusing it of violating international law.
But the NSO Group insisted that it had not been involved in the Khashoggi case, and stressed that all sales of the Pegasus were authorized by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which meant: Even if I really did it, there was a state behind it.
Behind it is a powerful national force, and without thinking about it, I know that this case will not be resolved in the end.
Today's NSO, although nominally a private company for free trade, has been under the strict control of the Israeli War Ministry and the Defense Export Department since 2016, and it is no longer up to the company itself to decide who the software can export and to whom it is prohibited.
Previously, the US "Washington Post" had exposed that the Israeli government had approved the sale of phone hacking spy software to Saudi intelligence agencies to enable Saudi intelligence agencies to hack into the mobile phones of people who opposed the government (including Khashoggi), saying that it was "Pegasus".
Israel's move is to establish a more solid cooperative relationship with Saudi Arabia in the process of confrontation with Iran.
But the NSO is not doing things for the government in vain, and there have been three transactions between the NSO and the United Arab Emirates, bringing nearly $80 million in profits to the NSO, which were facilitated by Israeli officials and successfully approved by the Israeli War Ministry.
The NSO has made money, and Israel can further co-opt the UAE to deal with Iran, and it can achieve this win-win situation.
To put it bluntly, the NSO is the Israeli government's "private Mossad", which has long been regarded by Israel as "soft power" and has become a weapon and means to help the Israeli government and some countries restore diplomatic relations.
Therefore, in the face of all kinds of lawsuits against the NSO, the government's protection of the NSO is not at all disguised.
In 2018, the aforementioned Amnesty International sued the NSO in Israel and tried to block its export of surveillance technology.
However, a judge in the District Court of Tel Aviv ( Israel 's second largest city ) dismissed the request on the grounds that the company had failed to produce sufficient evidence , adding that the Israeli Defense Ministry, which oversees the export of surveillance technology , has adequate safeguards in place to "protect human rights."
The "Pegasus" scandal caused a sensation in the world, and while international organizations, human rights organizations, EU governments, media and the international community issued strong condemnation of the NSO, Israel sang a double reed with the NSO.
Look, on the 29th, there were reports that the Israeli government "raided" the NSO Group's office in Tel Aviv; while the NSO said that the government "inspected" the company, and the government's actions they had been informed in advance, "the company is cooperating with the Israeli authorities in a completely transparent manner." Where is there such a "raid" under the heavens?
The "investigation results" were not unexpected at all, and the Israeli defense minister personally came out to "guarantee": "Pegasus" did not spy on Macron.
It is only a matter of time before Europe leads people's "tolerance" of the Prism Gate and believes that the Israeli side's rhetoric will gain European "understanding".
And Israel's close allies, the United States, which talks about "condemning cyber attacks" every day, is also silent about the "Pegasus" spyware, but in turn gathers allies and puts the hat of "malicious cyber attacks" on China's head.
On the second day after the "Pegasus" incident was exposed, on July 19, local time, the United States, britain, the European Union, NATO and other countries jointly issued a statement naming China, claiming that China launched a "malicious cyber attack" to make China responsible for a series of global cyber attacks earlier, including Microsoft's email system.
This drama really makes Grandpa laugh, the crimes of the United States and Israel on the issue of network security are innumerable, and the United States is pretending to be deaf and blind, but smearing China with false accusations on the issue of network security?
As we all know, there is an intelligence sharing mechanism between the United States and Israel, so if Israel collects useful information through the "Pegasus" software, it will be shared with the United States without involving its own state secrets.
As the "number one secret stealing power", the "Watergate Incident", the "Prism Gate Incident" and various wiretapping incidents have emerged in an endless stream, and with the cheapness of Israeli intelligence, the United States will of course pretend to be deaf and dumb to allies eavesdropping on the world, but in order to divert attention from their dirty behavior to China, the degree of facelessness has refreshed everyone's cognition.
Of course, we have been deterred by this shameless act, and our embassies in many countries have collectively and intensively fought back, and the struggle has been carried out in a reasonable, advantageous, and restrained manner.
It is conceivable that in the future, such groundless attacks against China will continue to flow, and the more evil things the other side does in some aspects, the more they will put their crimes on us, compared with the bullies' attacks on public opinion, their operations under the table are more worthy of vigilance and defense.
After all, the lower limit of some countries, we really can't explore to the end.
Resources:
BBC: Israeli software company NSO has been investigated for monitoring journalists and activists through malware
The New York Times: A New Era of Digital Warfare: How Hacking Companies Can Serve Authoritarian Governments