The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee explained on Wednesday that government-backed hackers are using spyware to breach phones belonging to US officials stationed around the world.
Last year, some hackers used popular spyware, Pegasus, to infiltrate the phones of US diplomats in Uganda. Pegasus is spyware that was developed by the Israeli vendor NSO Group.
Hackers used to access or spy on victims’ messages, cameras, and microphones, without the victims clicking on a link. Representative Adam Schiff, a Californian Democrat, said the incident was just a hint of the scale of the issue.
Furthermore, he said he believed the latest attempt was the tip of the iceberg, and that the hackers compromised other US government personnel devices. He also reiterated that nation-states using NSO’s services or tools are likely potent competitors.
Biden Addressed the use of Spyware
The Biden administration has started addressing the use of spyware tools following reports by media organizations.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, stated some cases of individuals who fell victim to Pegasus and Predators.
He said he sees the threat from proliferation as inevitable and it’s “totally out of control. He warned that the technology could spread beyond nation-state purchases to non-state actors and even to ransomware.
An NSO Group spokesperson said customers can’t target US numbers and its software cannot operate on US soil except through a US agency. However, the company did not respond to all the questions the press posed on Wednesday. It said it terminates contracts when they find illegal use.
According to Microsoft, Spyware vendors are increasingly selling their tools to authoritarian governments. Shane Huntley, director of the security team at Alphabet Inc’s Google, said his group has found 30 spyware tools in recent years.
Microsoft said the US should add more spyware groups to the entity list and regulate the use of Spyware groups or “cyber mercenaries.”
Meta Platforms Inc filed a lawsuit against NSO Group after hearing the scrutiny on the spyware industry. They accused NSO Group of aiding hackers who breached one of their platforms, Whatsapp.
Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican on the House intelligence committee, described the threat as hard to track and combat.
He said the US needs to put a greater emphasis on the threat. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the administration was seeking to counter foreign commercial hacking tools that get misused and ban their purchase by the US government.
