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NSO said on Wednesday that it would no longer respond to media inquiries
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It also said the stories of Pegasus being used for snooping were “planned and well-orchestrated media campaign”
Israel has set up a special ministerial team to look into the Pegasus spyware scandal, even as the malware’s maker NSO Group said it would probe any proof of its “misuse,” said local reports on Wednesday, July 21.
The team is reportedly headed by Israel’s National Security Council, which answers to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The council also has broader areas of expertise than the Defence Ministry, which oversees exports of NSO Group’s Pegasus software, said the reports.
Meanwhile, NSO said on Wednesday that it would no longer respond to media inquiries, following reports that its Pegasus malware was used by governments across the world to spy on politicians, judiciary, officials, activists, and journalists.
It also said the expose published by 17 news organisations worldwide over the week was a “planned and well-orchestrated media campaign lead [sic] by Forbidden Stories and pushed by special interest groups.”
The reports quoted an NSO spokesperson as saying: “NSO will thoroughly investigate any credible proof of misuse of its technologies, as we always had, and will shut down the system where necessary.”
Meanwhile, NSO also released a statement where it vehemently claimed that the list leaked to Amnesty International and French news non-profit Forbidden Stories was “not a list of targets or potential targets of Pegasus.”
It added in the statement: “The numbers in the list are not related to NSO group.”
It also said: “Any claim that a name in the list is necessarily related to a Pegasus target or Pegasus potential target is erroneous and false.”