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By Staff, Agencies Reports based on testimonies from at least four people revealed that “The Apple Inc iPhones of at least nine US State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by ‘Israeli’ NSO Group.” The hacks, which took place in the last several months, hit US officials either based in Uganda or focused on matters concerning the East African country, two of the sources said.

The intrusions represent the widest known hacks of US officials through NSO technology.

Previously, a list of numbers with potential targets including some American officials surfaced in reporting on NSO, but it was not clear whether intrusions were always tried or succeeded.

NSO Group claimed in a statement on Thursday that it did not have any indication their tools were used but canceled the relevant accounts and would investigate based on the Reuters inquiry.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department's recent decision to place the “Israeli” company on an entity list, making it harder for US companies to do business with them.

NSO Group and another spyware firm were "added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month.

The victims notified by Apple included American citizens and were easily identifiable as US government employees because they associated email addresses ending in state.gov with their Apple IDs, two of the people said.

They and other targets notified by Apple in multiple countries were infected through the same graphics processing vulnerability that Apple did not fix until September, the sources said.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said the threat to US personnel abroad was one of the reasons the administration was cracking down on companies such as NSO and pursuing new global discussion about spying limits.

The official added that they have seen "systemic abuse" in multiple countries involving NSO's Pegasus spyware

Original Article Source: Al Ahed News | Published on Saturday, 04 December 2021 08:51 (about 846 days ago)