The United Arab Emirates used Israeli technology in attempts to
spy on Qatar’s EmirTamim
bin Hamad Al Thani, Lebanese Prime MinisterSaad
Haririand a Saudi prince,The
New York Timeshasreported.
The malware, calledPegasus,
is made by the Israeli cyber warfare companyNSO
Groupand is only sold to governments.
The Israeli technology hacks
smartphones by sending the targeted device a compelling message
that contains a link. If the recipient clicks on the link, the
system installssophisticated
malwareon the device that can go undetected
and send a frightening amount of data to those doing the spying.
Data that can be obtained through
Pegasus includes locations, recordings, screenshots, email and
text messages, passwords and photographs.
The New York Timesdoes
not say if the UAE’s efforts to spy on the leaders of rival
states succeeded or what information was obtained.
Approved by Israel
The UAE
signed a contract to license the malware as early as August
2013. The deal is likely to have been worth around $18 million.
“The NSO Group and its affiliates
could have sold it to the Emirates only with approval by the
Israeli defense ministry,”The New York Timesreported.
The software was updated the next
year at a cost of $11 million, according to informationThe
New York Timesobtained through leaked
invoices and emails concerning two lawsuits filed in Cyprus and
Israel against NSO Group.
The lawsuits accuse the company
of participating in illegal spying. They were filed by “a Qatari
citizen and by Mexican journalists and activists who were all
targeted by the company’s spyware,” according toThe
New York Times.
When the UAE was offered an
update, the government wanted to test it before buying.
To impress its Emirati client,
the Israeli company recorded two phone calls that Saudi
journalist Abdulaziz Alkhamis made, and sent the data to Emirati
officials. Alkhamis confirmed toThe New York
Timesthat the phone calls did in fact take
place and that he was not aware of being under surveillance.
This WhatsApp message purporting to be about human rights
abuses in Saudi Arabia was an attempt to lure the recipient
into clicking on a link that would turn their mobile phone
into a powerful spying device.
Targeting human rights workers
Amnesty
Internationalstatedin
August that one of its staff was targeted by Pegasus in an
effort to spy on them.
The staff member had received a Whastapp
message which purported to be about a protest in support of
political prisoners held by Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International
stated that it “was clearly an attempt to trick our colleague
into clicking on the link.”
The domain name in the message
belongs to “a large network infrastructure that has been
previously documented to be connected to the Israeli
surveillance vendor, NSO Group,” Amnesty added.
Human rights defenders and others
in Panama, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates have been
targeted by the same Israeli spyware,investigationsby
the University of Toronto’sCitizen
Labhave revealed.
Amnesty identified one other
human rights defender in Saudi Arabia who was also targeted.
Among those who have been
targeted by the spyware, according to Citizen Lab, is the
Emirati human rights advocate Ahmed Mansoor, in 2016.
Mansoor wassentencedto
10 years in prison for social media postings in May.
Judo capitulation
The
exchange of spy technology between the United Arab Emirates and
Israel is a link in a chain ofongoing
collaborationthat datesback
to the 1990s. The collaboration has occurred despite how the
UAE and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations.
In the past few days, the UAE
Judo Federation hascapitulatedto
Israel’s demands to exhibit its flag and play its national
anthem at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam competition in October.
The International Judo Federation
initiallycanceledthe
Abu Dhabi event, along with one in Tunisia, after the two
countries refused to normalize Israeli participation.
The international federation has
now reinstated the Abu Dhabi competition.
Israeli culture ministerMiri
Regevthanked the president of the
International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, who she lobbied
extensively to exclude the UAE and Tunisia from Judo events.
“For the first time, Abu Dhabi
will host a sports delegation in Judo and will allow them to
compete with the flag and the anthem of the state of Israel,”
Regev said in a video message.
“It is time
that they understand, that in sports we separate between sport
and politics,” Regev stated, despite her ministry’s involvement
in the affair.
PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign
for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, condemned the
UAE’s decision.
“Is it conceivable that the
Israeli flag will be raised and the Israeli anthem, which
celebrates the restoration of the ‘land of Zion,’ will be played
in the United Arab Emirates at a time when the occupation is
killing our women and children, destroying our homes and fields,
‘Judaizing’ Jerusalem and expelling our people?” PACBIsaid.
“We call on the United Arab
Emirates to reverse this decision, which contributes to the
normalization of this regime and its international validation,
at a time when Israeli settler colonialism is being isolated and
its practices rejected.”