A former employee of NSO Group has been arrested by Israeli authorities while trying to sell spyware on the dark web for $50 million. NSO is a controversial company that makes spyware and zero-day exploits, and its former employee is accused of stealing the source code of its programs.
The employee, whose name has not yet been released by Israeli authorities, was stolen on April 29 and was later made available for sale on the dark web. The former employee logged into NSO's server as root and copied the source code to an external hard drive.
After the incident, the employee resigned due to dissatisfaction and proceeded to create the ad, where he would sell the code for 50 million euros in cryptocurrency. A random user who saw the ad informed the company, and after a quick investigation, the creator of the ad was arrested. Police searched the suspect's home, and found the external hard drive along with the stolen source code.
NSO is a controversial company known for the Pegasus iOS spyware and the Chrysaor Android spyware it released in the past. According to information released by authorities, the code that was stolen was the Pegasus iOS code.
There have been cases of governments using spyware created by NSO to gain greater control over their citizens. So even though NSO is involved in digital terrorism and cybercrime, Israeli authorities were forced to investigate and assist the company, which they did.
For your own security, we recommend that you use an antivirus from our list!
