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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
The tech giant’s lawsuit is just the latest in a string of bad news for NSO in the last few weeks. Earlier this month, the US government announced that it had added NSO Group to a denylist that will make it harder for the company to acquire any software, hardware, and services made in the United States. A few days later, NSO ’s newly appointed CEO quit. Then on Monday, the credit rating firm Moody’s warned investors that NSO is at risk of defaulting as it owes $500 million it may not be able to pay. Finally, MIT Technology Review reported on Tuesday that morale inside the company is at an all-time low.“State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, is quoted as saying in the press release. “Apple devices are the most secure consumer hardware on the market — but private companies developing state-sponsored spyware have become even more dangerous. While these cybersecurity threats only impact a very small number of our customers, we take any attack on our users very seriously, and we’re constantly working to strengthen the security and privacy protections in iOS to keep all our users safe.”
Do you work or have worked for NSO Group, or a similar company? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, Wickr/Telegram/Wire @lorenzofb, or email lorenzofb@vice.com
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