A report has revealed that an Israeli cybersecurity company has developed spyware that can scrape data from the servers of Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft products.
According to The Financial Times, NSO Group’s proprietary smartphone malware, Pegasus, harvests not only data stored on a device, but also any information stored in the cloud, including a user’s location data, archived messages and photos.
It must be recalled that NSO Group had previously installed malware in Facebook’s WhatsApp. However, according to CNBC, it denied that it markets software capable of capturing data in the cloud, saying “the Financial Times got it wrong. NSO’s products do not provide the type of collection capabilities and access to cloud applications, services, or infrastructure suggested in this article.”
NSO Group, however, admitted it has a screening process for clients and only sells to responsible governments for facilitating terrorism or criminal investigations.
While Facebook is reviewing the claims in the report, Apple and Google did not immediately return requests for comment.