Israeli Cyber Warfare Firm Employee Caught Selling Eavesdropping Software

Israel’s cyber warfare giant, NSO’s former employee stole company’s ‘Pegasus’ eavesdropping program software and tried to sell it on the ‘dark web’.

The Pegasus is a classified security tool that can eavesdrop on any person in the world without their knowledge, Globes reported Friday.

The accused is believed to have stolen NSO products and the program worth hundreds of millions of dollars. An indictment filed against the employee last week charged him with security offenses, in addition to theft from his employer. Up until now, a gag order was imposed on the particulars of the indictment, but publication of some of them has now been permitted, the report stated.

The employee was summoned to a pre-dismissal hearing in April this year, following which he connected a mobile storage device to the company’s servers and downloaded the software, products and information onto it including the source code of the software. He was caught while trying to sell it impersonating as a hacker belonging to a hacker group that had hacked into NSA servers.

"As stated clearly in the indictment, no IP or company materials have been shared with any 3rd party or otherwise leaked, and no customer data or information was compromised,” NSO said in a statement.