US SANCTIONS ISRAELI SPYWARE FIRM INTELLEXA, CITING ‘RECKLESS’ THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

Wed 18 September 2024:

The US has imposed sanctions on yet another Israeli spyware firm, Intellexa, citing the “threats” that it poses to national security. The move comes in the wake of the ongoing global scandal surrounding Israeli spyware companies, most notably NSO Group, which has been accused of selling espionage technology to some of the world’s most repressive regimes to target journalists, critics and human rights activists. NSO was put on Washington’s blacklist in 2021, again over national security concerns.

Three years on from the global NSO scandal, the proliferation of Israeli spyware continues to pose a menace, as the US Treasury Department announced yesterday the expansion of personal sanctions against officials linked to the offensive cyber-arms firms Cytrox and Intellexa, developers of the Predator spyware software used for mobile phone surveillance.

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“The United States will not tolerate the reckless propagation of disruptive technologies that threatens our national security and undermines the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens,” said Bradley T Smith, acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “We will continue to hold accountable those that seek to enable the proliferation of exploitative technologies, while also encouraging the responsible development of technologies that align with international standards.”

The sanctions target four individuals, including Merom Harpaz, an Israeli national with ties to the defence establishment who has been working from Greece in recent years. Harpaz is described as “a top executive of the Intellexa Consortium, and acted as a manager of Intellexa SA.”

Felix Bitzios, a Greek national believed to have helped Intellexa relocate to Greece, is also on the new US sanction list. According to the US Treasury, Bitzios “is the beneficial owner of an Intellexa Consortium company that was used to supply Predator spyware to a foreign government client.”

The Predator spyware developed by Intellexa is capable of gaining access to data stored and transmitted from a target’s device through one-click and zero-click attacks, requiring no user interaction for infection. Once successful, the spyware can provide operators with access to sensitive information including photos, geolocation data, personal messages and microphone records.

Investigations by journalists have revealed that Intellexa’s Predator spyware was sold to a Sudanese militia and even to militants in Bangladesh, highlighting the ongoing concerns about the lack of oversight and regulation around Israel’s cyber-surveillance industry.

Candiru is another Israeli company sanctioned by the US in 2021, when it was added to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List for activities contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests.

As many as 50,000 phone numbers were said to have been selected for surveillance using the Israeli snooping technology, according to details of a 2021 investigation uncovering the hacking by the Pegasus Project, a ground-breaking collaboration by more than 80 journalists from 17 media organisations in ten countries.

The most high-profile case of espionage involving NSO technology was that of Jamal Khashoggi. The widow of the murdered dissident Saudi journalist revealed in a lawsuit that surveillance software built by the Israeli company was used to spy on her messages in the months leading up to her husband’s killing. The CIA concluded in 2021 that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman “approved” the operation to “capture or kill” the journalist in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, 2018. In November, 2022, US President Joe Biden granted Bin Salman immunity over the Khashoggi killing.

-MEMO

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