NSO Group
More info
- Creator
- Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio, Omri Lavie
- Released
- 2010
- Type
- Surveillance software
Israeli firm behind the Pegasus spyware, sold to governments and repeatedly found on the phones of journalists, lawyers and dissidents.
The name is the founders' initials: Niv, Shalev and Omri. Pegasus takes over a phone completely — messages, microphone, camera, location — and is licensed to agencies that, according to the company, only pursue terrorists and serious criminals. In 2016 the Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor received a suspicious text, and Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton at Citizen Lab found a chain of three iOS zero-days behind the link.
Later versions didn't need a click at all. In 2019 a missed WhatsApp call was enough, and FORCEDENTRY (2021) hid inside a fake GIF delivered over iMessage. That same year the US blacklisted the company and Apple sued it. WhatsApp won its case against NSO in 2025. The business model, selling exploits as a service to governments, has never changed.