Amazon Web Services Shuts Down Accounts, Servers Linked to NSO Group - Report

Sputnik

by Kirill Kurevlev
© AFP 2021 / JOHANNES EISELE

This follows the Sunday publication by a coalition of media outlets and activist organizations revealing that the Israeli company's Pegasus spyware had been used for surveillance of at least 50,000 journalists and government officials.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has blocked cloud accounts and shut down all the infrastructure belonging to NSO Group, Vice reported on Monday, citing the company's statement.

The above-mentioned publication was dedicated to the investigation into NSO's malware and phone numbers that may be targeted by NSO's government clients.

According to an investigation by seventeen media outlets from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other countries, NSO Group's software Pegasus was used to hack smartphones that belonged to human rights activists and lawyers, journalists, business executives, and even two women who were close to journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

"When we learned of this activity, we acted quickly to shut down the relevant infrastructure and accounts," a spokesperson for AWS is quoted in the report as saying.

Amnesty International's forensic report published on Sunday said that NSO Group's software was found utilizing AWS's CloudFront infrastructure, a content-delivery network, "to deliver the earlier stages of their attacks" against targeted mobile devices during the forensic examination that resulted in the reports.
Publish : 2021-07-20 10:43:00

Give Your Comments