Spyware Pegasus: Amazon Cuts NSO Infrastructure and Deletes Accounts
For the Israeli company NSO and its spyware Pegasus, the latest revelations have the first consequences. A major cloud provider has pulled the plug.
(Image: Ioan Panaite/Shutterstock.com)
.- Martin Holland
The US cloud service provider AWS (Amazon Web Services) has shut down infrastructure and accounts associated with the Israeli NSO Group and its spyware Pegasus. This is reported by the US magazine Vice, citing Amazon, referring to the recent allegations against the Israeli company, whose surveillance software was found on dozens of smartphones by journalists, human rights activists, their family members and businessmen. "When we learned of these activities, we reacted quickly and blocked the relevant infrastructure and accounts," Amazon said.
Other cloud services also used
The NSO Group has been criticized for years because the spyware developed there, contrary to the company's promises, was repeatedly used by totalitarian governments to spy on the press and dissidents. The latest allegations have now been made by a consortium of journalistswho were able to evaluate parts of a data set of more than 50,000 telephone numbers. These were allegedly selected by NSO customers as potential spying targets. In Germany, journalists' associations were already demanding consequences,in Hungary the government denied allegations there and in France the government announced investigations.
A detailed summary of the technical background published by Amnesty International revealed, among other things, that the infrastructure used by NSO to operate the spyware was also based on AWS. 73 servers were assigned to the US provider. Other providers used include Digital Ocean, Linode and the European provider OVH. While Amazon has now reacted, there are still no statements from the others. According to the technical reports on Pegasus spyware, NSO had probably only recently switched to AWS and the associated content delivery network Cloudfront. NSO had vehemently rejected the allegations made on Sunday.
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