The Israeli NSO Group's Pegasus, considered as the world’s most effective spyware due to its capability of cracking encrypted communications of iPhone and Android smartphones in a reliable way, has been found by a New York Times (NYT) investigation to have been bought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The investigation was published on Friday in The New York Times, under the title “The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon.”

NYT found that sales of Pegasus played a major role in securing the support of Arab nations in "Israel’s" campaign against Iran and pushing the normalization deals (the so-called “Abraham Accords”) forward.

Pegasus used against US citizens

In addition to the Pegasus spyware the FBI secretly bought back in 2019, NSO Group also gave the security agency a demonstration of Phantom, a newer tool that could hack American phone numbers.

According to Apple Insider, the FBI considered using the Pegasus spyware for US domestic surveillance when the agency bought it. 

The US Justice Department and the FBI spent two years discussing whether to use Phantom, with the FBI deciding against it and all NSO spyware in 2021.

Nonetheless, the New York Times report of the investigation confirms that the Pegasus equipment is still in the possession of the FBI at a New Jersey facility.

The 2019 Secret deal

Therefore, according to the NYT, and despite numerous reports saying that it had been used to track political opponents and activists in other countries, the FBI still bought the notorious Pegasus.

The NYT conducted the investigation for over a year, and it was based on interviews with officials in the government and in the intelligence, as well as cyber experts and privacy activists in a dozen of countries.

The investigation focused on how NSO started, and it included the company's blacklisting by the Biden administration in November for being used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” journalists and others.

The enraged "Israel"

After media reports on Pegasus' usage in various spyware attacks on heads of states, journalists, political activists, and human rights activists, the United States decided to blacklist NSO, Pegasus' parent company in early November 2021.

The United States placed "Israel's" spyware maker NSO Group, the corporation behind the notorious Pegasus, on its list of restricted companies. NSO Group's Pegasus was exposed as having been used by oppressive regimes to spy on journalists, human rights activists, dissidents, and even heads of state. 

The blacklisting has enraged Israeli officials who have doomed the move as an attack not only on NSO, but on the whole of "Israel".

Yigal Unna, director-general of the "Israel" National Cyber Directorate until Jan. 5 said, “The people aiming their arrows against NSO are actually aiming at the blue and white flag hanging behind it.”