An African secret alliance that has brought the NSO to the brink of collapse

In February 2019, an Israeli woman sat face to face with the son of the President of Uganda, and spoke boldly – would she want to secretly steal any phone in the world?

Lt General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, his father-in-law and long-time successor to Yoweri Museveni, was keen, said two businessmen.

Besides, the woman, who had Israeli intellectuals, throws Pegasus, a spy weapon so powerful that dictators in the Middle East and autonomous governments have been paying millions for years.

But for the NSO, the Israeli company that produced Pegasus, this rivalry in East Africa would have been the time to cross the red line, angered US ambassadors and initiated a series of actions that could be seen by the trade department, followed by Apple. , and was fired until it failed to repay its debts, according to interviews with US and Israeli officials, corporate executives and employees of the NSO.

A few months after the first visit, NSO chief executive Shalev Hulio arrived in Uganda to sign the agreement, according to two people familiar with the NSO business in East Africa. Hulio, who flew around the world with the Israeli government’s permission to sell Pegasus, liked to show in real time how to destroy a new, boxed iPhone.

The last business was small for the NSO. An expert on the project said it brought in between $ 10m and $ 20m, a small portion of $ 243m which Moody estimated the secret NSO made money in 2020.

But about two years after the sale, someone sent Pegasus to try to smash the phones of 11 U.S. ambassadors and staff at the US embassy in Uganda, according to two U.S. officials, who spoke after notifications were sent by Apple when the manufacturer of the iPhone. found and closed faults in his travels in November.

It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. A neighbor of Uganda, Rwanda, also used Pegasus to hack phones within Uganda, but the revelation surprised the US. The NSO regularly informs its customers that US phone numbers are unlimited. For this reason, all 11 goals were using Ugandan numbers, but they had Apple records using their government department emails, according to two US officials.

The NSO said it had closed the system to evade “customers related to the matter” and was investigating the matter. Museveni’s presidential press secretary and Ugandan minister of information did not respond to a request for comment. A source close to Museveni said he was “not allowed to speak on the matter”.

Israeli and US officials have refused to confirm that the Ugandan hacking directly led to the decision to register the NSO. But a senior US official who discussed the matter with the Israeli Ministry of Defense stated: “Look at the whole list here — be careful, not by accident.” He further added that placing the NSO, one of Israel’s most valuable assets, on the black US list was designed to “punish and exclude” the company.

The blacklisting, amen arrived in November, means that the NSO will not purchase any equipment, services or intelligence from US companies without permission, damaging the company whose terminals run servers from Dell and Intel, routers from Cisco, and their computer systems running Windows systems, according to a paper from commercial in Ghana, West Africa.

For example, in recent weeks, Intel has asked all of its employees to terminate any business relationship with the NSO, one person familiar with the matter said. Intel said in a statement that it “complies with all US laws, including regulations applicable outside the US”.

The new CEO, Itzik Benbenisti, hired by Partner Communications, one of Israel’s leading telecom operators, quit his new job two weeks after he was fired. And when the company tried to impress its employees with the Hannukah party on the beach in Eilat, Hulio – who took over the reins after the Benbenist resigned – was very unwavering on his recent phone call with a former business partner.

“We always knew that this thing had an expiration date,” he told his colleague, complaining that some clients had asked him to change their contracts to an anonymous person, according to someone familiar with the negotiations.

After ten years in favor of the Israeli government, the NSO now appears to be provoking ties between Israel and the US, using “an important foreign policy that we need to discuss in Iran”, said a foreign minister who requested anonymity.

This is also a change for the NSO, which former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used as an ambassador card with several countries, including the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which had no relations with Israel.

The devastation of this history has also made it difficult to continue recruiting high-level graduates of Israel Elite Signs intelligence units, which have the ability to repeatedly replicate the security of Android phones and iPhones.

For example, after Google changed the tactic used against American ambassadors to Uganda, it discovered a small piece that converted the Xerox machines of the 1990s to fit into a Turing machine – especially a complete computer – into one. High GIF.

“It’s amazing, and at the same time, awesome,” said Google engineers. “Oh. Wow,” said Yaniv Erlich, an Israeli professor of computer science at Columbia University.

“You can count on one side the number of groups in the world that can do things like this,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, who discovered the malware and informed Apple.

The NSO said it had hired 30 new employees in recent weeks. “There is an understanding among our staff that there is a big difference between media reports and reality,” the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the NSO crashed into the edge of Silicon Valley, infuriating Apple and Meta by stealing iPhones and WhatsApp.

Apple’s two approaches – which have revealed much about the intentions of NSO’s hacks, as they challenge the company in US courts – have sent “shockwave” through companies, said a source familiar with the matter.

Apple and Citizen Lab also shared NSO technical secrets, with companies claiming to have asked their customers to use spyware, fearing capture on Apple’s network, a senior Israeli expert said.

“There is a perception that this is a war against all corporations,” he said, adding that Israeli senior NSO staff and other similar companies “remained” in Israel to avoid being subjected to interrogation. The US is allies.

Meanwhile, US pressure has left the NSO with fewer options, say industry experts. Moody’s has reduced the NSO’s debt as corporate free spending has changed in 2020 and is expected to remain idle this year. “There is a high risk the NSO will probably not match” the $ 500m debt agreement that was taken in 2019 to be set aside at a cost of $ 1bn, Moody’s said.

It has hired Moelis & Co, a bank from NY to see if it can sell parts of the company for cash, even if it offered to change Pegasus into a “self-defense” item if it makes it more attractive to US investors.

Last Wednesday, the window narrowed – 18 U.S. senators wrote to Secretary-General Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to approve the NSO under the Magnitsky Act, along with a few other cyber security companies.

If the US responds to the request, the NSO will be removed from US banks and its employees will be banned from going to the US.