Israeli lawmaker sees possible export review on NSO spyware scandal

Israel's parliamentary review panel may recommend changes to defence export policy over high-profile allegations that spyware sold by Israeli cyber firm NSO Group has been abused in several countries, a senior lawmaker said on Thursday.

"We certainly have to look anew at this whole subject of licenses granted by DECA," Ram Ben-Barak, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, told Israel's Army Radio, referring to the government-run Defence Export Controls Agency.

Israel has appointed an inter-ministerial team to assess reports published since Sunday following an investigation by 17 media organisations, which said NSO's Pegasus software had been used in attempted and successful hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists. read more

World leaders were among those whose phone numbers the news organisations said were on a list of possible targets, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Pakistani Prime Minister Imram Khan and Morocco's King Mohammed VI.

NSO has rejected the reporting by the media partners as "full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories". Reuters has not independently verified the reporting.

The Israeli inter-ministerial team "will conduct its checks, and we will be sure to look into the findings and see if we need to fix things here," Ben-Barak said.

DECA is within Israel's Defence Ministry and oversees NSO exports. Both the ministry and the firm have said that Pegasus is meant to be used to track terrorists or criminals only, and that all foreign clients are vetted governments.

NSO says it does not know the specific identities of people against whom clients use Pegasus, but that if it receives complaints it can acquire the target lists and unilaterally shut down the software for any clients found to have abused it.

After Army Radio also aired an interview on Thursday with Szabolcs Panyi, a Hungarian journalist who said Pegasus had been found on his cellphone, NSO chief Shalev Hulio vowed to investigate.

"If he was indeed a target, I can assure you already that we will cut off the systems of whoever took action against him, because it's intolerable for someone to do something like this," Hulio told the station.

In keeping with NSO and Defence Ministry reticence about identifying client countries, Hulio stopped short of confirming that Hungary had bought Pegasus. He said NSO has worked with 45 countries and rejected around 90 others as potential clients.

The company has shut down five Pegasus systems for abuse, Hulio said, adding that the software cannot be used against Israeli or US mobile phones.