NSO group today announces a reorganization of the company and the departure of CEO Shalev Hulio, replaced by Yaron Shohat, current director of operations who will preside over the reorganization »the company said in a statement sent to AFP.
NSO did not confirm these figures, but indicated on Sunday “reorganize all of its activities”, “streamline operations” and this, in order to “to remain one of the largest cybertech companies in the world” and focus sales “to NATO member countries”.
In the summer of 2021, NSO found itself in the spotlight following a media consortium revealed that the phone numbers of at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists and 65 business leaders had been spied on via its Pegasus software.
This computer tool, considered a “weapon” by the Israeli defense which must give the green light to its export, allows for example to remotely activate the cameras and the microphones of a smartphone.
The firm NSO repeats since these revelations, and others which followed, to have obtained the licenses to export its software and that the latter, intended for counterterrorism and the fight once morest crime, might have been “hijacked” of its use by certain customers.
But these revelations and a debt contracted beforehand by the group have amputated its cash threatening until the survival of this flagship Israeli cybertech company, according to court documents consulted at the beginning of the year by AFP.
These documents revealed an internal battle over the countries to which the group should sell its technology, with some creditors saying they did not object to its sale to so-called countries. “high risk” because of their human rights record, to avoid losing money.
According to these documents, Berkeley Research Group (BRG), an American management firm which manages the majority of the group’s shares, opposed it, insisting on the priority for NSO to get out of the American blacklist of companies threatening state security. on which it was placed in November.
