WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s spyware firm NSO Group said on Sunday its Chief Executive Shalev Hulio is stepping down with immediate effect, with Chief Operating Officer Yaron Shohat appointed to oversee a reorganization of the defaced company before a successor is named.
A source in the company confirmed that around 100 employees will be let go as part of the firm’s reorganization.
The surveillance firm, which makes Pegasus software, has been contending with legal action after its tools were misused by governments and other agencies to hack mobile phones.
Smartphones infected with Pegasus can be turned into a listening device. In addition, the spyware allows the user to read the target’s messages, look through their photos, track their location and even turn on their camera without them knowing.
Last December, Apple Inc. notified at least 11 U.S. diplomats that their iPhones had been hacked by unknown assailants using Pegasus.
The revelation came a month after the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted the Zionist surveillance company, which has so far exported Pegasus to 45 countries around the world.
The UK government’s infection is just one of the hacks that Citizen Lab has detected as of late.
Citizen Lab has also said that networks operated by groups in Spain that were advocating independence in the Catalonia region were also targeted with Pegasus.
According to the researchers, some 65 individuals were targeted or infected with the spyware or Candiru, a similar phone hacking software developed by another secretive company based on the Israeli-occupied territories, including Catalan president, Pere Aragones.
In an article published in The New Yorker in April, Ronan Farrow described the hacking as “the largest forensically documented cluster of such attacks and infections on record”.
“That kind of surveillance in democratic countries and democratic states—I mean, it’s unbelievable,” Jordi Solé, a pro-independence member of the European Parliament, was cited as saying in the article titled “How Democracies Spy on Their Citizens”.