MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / November 23, 2021
US tech giant is also seeking to permanently prevent NSO from using any Apple software, services or devices.
Apple on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Israeli company NSO Group over the use of its Pegasus spyware to attack its users.
The lawsuit is the second of its kind by a private company after Facebook sued the company in 2019 for targeting its users on WhatsApp, and represents a growing number of US tech companies attempting to curb the use of Israeli spyware across their platforms.
“State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said in a statement.
“While these cybersecurity threats only impact a very small number of our customers, we take any attack on our users very seriously, and we’re constantly working to strengthen the security and privacy protections in iOS to keep all our users safe.”
In addition to holding it accountable for targeting Apple devices, the California-based tech giant also wants to permanently prevent NSO from using any Apple software, services or devices.
Such a move could potentially render the company’s Pegasus spyware product worthless, given that much of its business is to give clients full access to a user’s Apple or Android smartphone.
“The steps we’re taking today will send a clear message: In a free society, it is unacceptable to weaponize powerful state-sponsored spyware against those who seek to make the world a better place,” said Ivan Krstic, the head of Apple security engineering and architecture.
In response to the lawsuit, an NSO spokesperson told Middle East Eye that “thousands of lives were saved around the world thanks to NSO Group’s technologies used by its customers”.
“Pedophiles and terrorists can freely operate in technological safe-havens, and we provide governments the lawful tools to fight it. NSO group will continue to advocate for the truth,” they added.
After filing its lawsuit, Apple also announced that it would provide assistance, as well as donate $10m, to Canada-based Citizen Lab and other groups working on combating digital surveillance.
NSO setbacks
NSO has suffered a series of devastating blows in recent months. On 3 November, the US Commerce Department blacklisted the NSO and Candiru, another Israeli spyware company, saying their activities were in contravention of American national security interests.
The move bans NSO Group and Candiru from purchasing parts and components from US companies without a special licence.
On Monday, the credit rating service Moody’s found that after the restrictions in the US, NSO was facing a growing risk of default on around $500m of debt.
Apple’s legal move follows a similar lawsuit by the Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, which first sued NSO in 2019 over the alleged targeting of its servers in California.
Tech giants Google and Microsoft joined forces last December and filed an amicus brief in support of WhatsApp’s lawsuit, saying that they hope the legal efforts “will help protect our collective customers and global digital ecosystem from more indiscriminate attacks”.
One week after the US’s blacklisting of the company, a federal appeals court rejected NSO’s motion to dismiss the WhatsApp lawsuit, saying the Israeli company’s argument that it had “foreign sovereign immunity” did not stand.
