"How the Global Spyware Industry Spiraled Out of Control" 8 December 2022

The Biden administration took a public stand last year against the abuse of spyware to target human rights activists, dissidents and journalists: It blacklisted the most notorious maker of the hacking tools, the Israeli firm NSO Group. But the global industry for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — continues to boom...

...The Drug Enforcement Administration is secretly deploying spyware from a separate Israeli firm, according to five people familiar with the operations of the agency, which a decade ago used a different type of spyware in Colombia...

...After questions from The New York Times, the Greek government admitted that it gave the company, Intellexa, licenses to sell Predator to at least one country with a history of repression, Madagascar....Predator was found to have been used in another dozen countries since 2021, illustrating the continued demand among governments and the lack of robust international efforts to limit the use of such tools...

...The most sophisticated spyware tools — like NSO’s Pegasus — have “zero-click” technology, meaning they can stealthily and remotely extract everything from a target’s mobile phone, without the user having to click on a malicious link to give Pegasus remote access. They can also turn the mobile phone into a tracking and secret recording device, allowing the phone to spy on its owner. But hacking tools without zero-click capability, which are considerably cheaper, also have a significant market...

...Besides the D.E.A.’s use of spyware — in this case, a tool called Graphite, made by the Israeli firm Paragon — the C.I.A. during the Trump administration purchased Pegasus for the government of Djibouti, which used the hacking tool for at least a year. And F.B.I. officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy Pegasus in their own criminal investigations before the bureau ultimately abandoned the idea.

In a statement to The Times, the Drug Enforcement Administration said that “the men and women of the D.E.A. are using every lawful investigative tool available to pursue the foreign-based cartels and individuals operating around the world responsible for the drug-poisoning deaths of 107,622 Americans last year.”..

...Paragon’s sales are regulated by the Israeli government, which approved the sale of Graphite to the United States, according to an official aware of Israel’s defense export licensing agreements.

The company was founded just three years ago by Ehud Schneorson, a former commander of Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Little public information is available about the company; it has no website. Most of the company’s executives are Israeli intelligence veterans, some of whom worked for NSO, according to two former Unit 8200 officers and a senior Israeli official.

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, sits on the company’s board, and American money helps finance its operations. Battery Ventures, a Boston-based fund, lists Paragon as one of the companies in which it invests. A representative for Paragon declined to comment...