Friday, January 28, 2022

The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon

A yearlong Times investigation.

For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm NSO Group had been selling its Pegasus surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else could: crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.

Pegasus has helped countries take down drug cartels and thwart terrorist plots, but it has also been used to throw journalists and dissidents in jail and to spy on activists. But none of the documented abuses prevented new customers from approaching NSO, including the U.S., where Pegasus was bought and tested by the F.B.I., though never deployed.

Read our cover story for next week, a yearlong investigation we're putting online early today, which reveals how Israel reaped diplomatic gains around the world from NSO's Pegasus spyware — a tool America itself purchased but is now trying to ban.

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