Posted this last night(different link) and got overlooked.
This is the second write up about this from sauce…phone spying tools, israhell & the House of Saud and a company called Q Cyber Technologies. Someone was asleep at the wheel last night..this all seems very fukken notable. Even Khashoggi gets a mention.
>House of Saud and fog: 8 things to know for December 9
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Spy friends: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius reports that Israel signed off on NSO Group’s sale of Pegasus phone hacking technology to Saudi Arabia, citing former US officials.
The Saudis were widely rumored to have used the technology as part of a cyber war waged against dissidents, including Jamal Khashoggi, though it was not clear if Israel’s Defense Ministry had authorized the sale, as it is supposed to by law. This seems to answer that question.
“The Saudis knew that Israel, their historical nemesis, had the most sophisticated cyber tools. And according to American, European and Saudi sources, the Saudis increasingly looked to buy technology from Israeli cyber companies,” Ignatius writes.
“The result was one of the most intriguing intelligence alliances in the history of the Middle East, as Israeli companies began sharing with the Saudis some of its cyber secrets. It was a devil’s bargain: Israel gained a secret Sunni Arab ally against Iran (and also an opportunity through cyber cooperation to gather information about the kingdom), and MBS obtained new tools to combat his internal enemies,” he adds.
According to the report, the sale was run through a Luxembourg company called Q Cyber Technologies, whose online footprint is basically just that it’s a shady subsidiary of NSO.
Unlike NSO it has a website, though it provides almost no info. A whois lookup of the site shows that it uses a product called WhoisGuard to make sure nobody can find out who it actually is.
NSO and Q Cyber won’t confirm the report. The Defense Ministry meanwhile, is just as opaque, telling Haaretz that “the Defense Export Control Agency (DECA) strictly provides licenses to security exporters in accordance to the law, the standards and the commitments that the State of Israel is committed to, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities. The Defense Ministry does not provide details about the Israeli government’s policy on giving export licenses or about the licenses themselves for defense and strategic reasons. For this reason, we cannot comment on the question whether the aforementioned license exists.”
Continued at sauce..
>https://www.timesofisrael.com/house-of-saud-and-fog-8-things-to-know-for-december-9/
The ones we're Saving for Last are working their way into the Movie.