New CEO-designate of Pegasus spyware maker NSO Group resigns after US sanctions

Multiple Israeli news outlets are reporting that Itzik Benbenisti, the man slated to become the new CEO of controversial spyware company NSO Group, has resigned just two weeks after accepting the role. 

Both The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz said Benbenisti decided against replacing current CEO Shalev Hulio after the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added NSO Group to the Entity List “for engaging in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States” last week. 

NSO Group did not respond to requests for comment, but confirmed Benbenisti’s decision to Haaretz. His appointment to CEO had been announced on October 31 but he had not started yet. 

Sources told Haaretz that Benbenisti was spooked by the new sanctions as well as the swirling legal ramifications of a series of revelations that have come out this year about the company’s spyware. 

The US said NSO Group and another spyware firm called Candiru were added to the list because officials had found “evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, business people, activists, academics, and embassy workers.” 

The Commerce Department noted that the governments given these tools repressed a number of people in other countries beyond their borders, explaining that some authoritarian governments target “dissidents, journalists and activists outside of their sovereign borders to silence dissent.”

NSO Group continues to face a barrage of bad headlines over how it’s Pegasus spyware has been used around the world. Last week, a bombshell report from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and the Associated Press said that even as the Israeli government has worked ardently to separate itself from NSO Group’s actions, its own spy agency used the tool to hack the phones of six Palestinian human rights activists. 

That report followed another about the ruler of the UAE using Pegasus to spy on his ex-wife and her British lawyers. 

In July, the “Pegasus Project” used information from Amnesty International, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Forbidden Stories to discover that the company’s spyware was used to target at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and at least 600 politicians. 

Government officials including French President Emmanuel Macron, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Iraqi President Barham Salih as well as cabinet ministers from dozens of countries like Egypt, Pakistan and more were targeted with Pegasus. 

Hulio is planning to stay on as CEO to guide the company through this turbulent period, according to Haaretz. 

Last week, on the heels of the sanctions announcement, several US Congress members demanded the State Department further investigate how Pegasus and other spyware is being used to abuse human rights around the world.

“As members of Congress deeply concerned with the rising tides of authoritarianism around the world, we have closely tracked the parallel and reinforcing proliferation of commercially distributed surveillance and cyber-intrusion tools. These are extremely sensitive and powerful technologies used by foreign governments against Americans, as well as against journalists and civic activists,” the members of Congress said. 

“While recent reporting confirmed that NSO Group’s Pegasus software was used against journalists, human rights activists, and opposition politicians, many others are profiting from this new arms market.”