U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 3 - Apple Inc iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, according to four people familiar with the matter. The intrusions, first reported here, represent the widest known hacks of U.S. officials through NSO technology. "If our investigation shall show these actions indeed happened with NSO's tools, such customer will be terminated permanently and legal actions will take place," said an NSO spokesperson, who added that NSO will also "Cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have." NSO Group and another spyware firm were "Added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month. NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1.But in the Uganda case, the targeted State Department employees were using iPhones registered with foreign telephone numbers, said two of the sources, without the U.S. country code. The official added that they have seen "Systemic abuse" in multiple countries involving NSO's Pegasus spyware. The Israeli Ministry of Defense must approve export licenses for NSO, which has close ties to Israel's defense and intelligence communities, to sell its technology internationally.