According to the NYT documents, the NSO Group charges $500,000 installation fee.
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It would appear that there’s a company out there that can sell software programs that can allow anyone to discreetly spy on iPhone users, tracking each and everything they do on their device.
Now, internal NSO Group emails, contracts and commercial proposals obtained by The New York Times offer rare insight into how companies in this secretive digital surveillance industry operate.
The company is one of dozens of digital spying outfits tracking everything a target does on a smartphone. “NSO can say they’re trying to make the world a safer place, but they are also making the world a more surveilled place”.
A price list of the NSO Group’s services shows why governments and law enforcement agencies are the industry’s biggest customers. However, Apple has released an update after a waking call from the research group.
Citizen Lab said the links it received belonged to a collection of exploits connected with the NSO Group. Once the NSO Group sells its software, the government or law enforcement agency that purchased it can use it for whatever objective. Israel has strict export controls for digital weaponry, but the country has never barred an NSO Group deal with a foreign country. Almost a year later, Francisco Partners was exploring a sale of the company for 10 times that amount, according to two people approached by the firm but forbidden to speak about the discussions.
As Engadget notes, however, a spokesperson for the Israeli company states that the services of the NSO Group are only available to authorized government bodies. He declined to comment on whether it would cease selling to the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
Citizen Lab said that the high cost of iPhone zero-days, the apparent use of NSO Group’s government-exclusive Pegasus product, and prior known targeting of Mansoor by the UAE government suggested that the UAE government is the most likely suspect behind the attack.
Pegasus is created to give a remote attacker access to virtually very function on a victim’s device including emails, texts, location, browsing history, device settings, IM, microphone, phone calls, and calendar records. The software can use its “room tap” feature to allow the device’s microphone to collect all the sounds surrounding it, and can also use the device’s camera for screenshots and to take pictures. And all of the data can be sent back to the attacker’s server in real time. When such tricky emails and SMS messages opened, the software automatically gets installed into the device without the knowledge of users and starts sending personal data from the device, such as contact lists, Global Positioning System data, microphone recordings, camera access, etc.
Much like a traditional software company, the NSO Group prices its surveillance tools by the number of targets, starting with a flat $500,000 installation fee. In the case of iPhones, the client has to pay $650,000 to hack 10 Apple phones or Android phones, $300,000 to hack 5 Symbian phones and $500,000 to hack 5 BlackBerry devices.
Buyers can pay for more targets.
They have even more advanced plans to increase the sales of its packages such as, $150,000 for 20 extra target devices, $500,000 extra for 50 target devices and $800,000 extra for 100 extra phones or computers. NSO also charges a further annual system maintenance fee of 17% of the total price every year after the initial order.
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And, its proposal adds, “It leaves no traces whatsoever”.
