NSO Group Admits Selling Saifan To Israeli Police, This Is Pegasus Version With Lower Capability

JAKARTA – The director of the Israeli spyware company NSO Group announced on Tuesday, March 29 that it had sold equipment to the country's police. This toolkit is a variant of the Pegasus hacking tool that can access local phones. However, they describe this as "weaker" than the export version.

Unsourced media reports last month of unwarranted wiretapping by Israeli police using Pegasus have added a domestic dimension to longstanding allegations that the tool is being misused by foreign governments against journalists, rights activists, and politicians.

Israeli police themselves have denied any wrongdoing. An investigation appointed by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, which consulted the records of NSO's client surveillance targets, found the reports to be unfounded.

Shalev Hulio, co-founder and chief executive of NSO, told Tel Aviv radio station 103 FM that Israeli police had purchased the equipment it said was not Pegasus. But this system called 'Saifan', "is basically, a weaker version of Pegasus... with lesser capabilities and fewer means of operation".

Unfortunately, Hulio did not explain further how the tool works, even though its capabilities are weaker than Pegasus.

Israeli media itself has reported that the hacking tools used by the police are designed to allow wiretapping in real-time. Meanwhile, Pegasus also provides access to past correspondence stored on the mobile phone.

Hulio said NSO had shared with the government its investigation of "audit trail logs" from Israel that were targeted by police using the company's spyware. That means they implicitly admit that "Saifan" can hack Israeli phones. This is something NSO has long stated that it can't do with Pegasus.

"Pegasus has a protection mechanism that prevents it from being used against Israeli numbers," Hulio said, as quoted by Reuters. "Any package that has ever been sold to a client abroad is absolutely impermissible to intercept Israeli numbers. That's how Pegasus was built."

NSO says all of its sales are approved by the Israeli government and are meant to prevent terrorism and crime. "Saifan" is Hebrew for gladiolus, avocet or green swordtail fish.