Israeli firm NSO Group says it will investigate its foreign government clients for 'abuses' of its Pegasus spyware after a damning Amnesty International report revealed on Sunday that it had been used to target some 50,000 phones - including those of journalists, public officials and Arab royals.
NSO Group sells Pegasus to government clients with the purported purpose of investigating terrorism and crime.
The Amnesty International report, along with another by a consortium of global media outlets, claimed that it was actually being used by governments to spy on journalists, officials, royals and individuals including murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi's widow.
The journalists targeted included Ben Hubbard, the New York Times' Beirut Bureau Chief, and Azam Ahmed, the Times' Mexico Bureau Chief, along with other journalists based in India, the Morocco, Mexico and Azerbaijan.
Others include reporters working for the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and CNN but many have not been named. 189 journalists were targeted.
NSO released a statement via its US-based lawyer, Clare Locke, to say it had nothing to do with any misuse of Pegasus.
Its CEO, Shalev Hulio, told The Washington Post: 'Every allegation about misuse of the system is concerning me.
The list includes some the 50,000 phone numbers that were exposed to the malware. The malware doesn't require users to click on it for it to work
NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio, told The Washington Post : 'Every allegation about misuse of the system is concerning me'
'It violates the trust that we give customers. We are investigating every allegation … and if we find that it is true, we will take strong action.'
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'When we learned of this activity, we acted quickly to shut down the relevant infrastructure and accounts.'
The Amnesty report says NSO switched to use Amazon's CloudFront - a CDN - in 'recent months'.
Amnesty started investigating the group in 2018 after learning one of its staffers had been targeted.
It compiled a list of 50,000 phone numbers that were exposed to the malware. It's unclear if all were compromised or if the numbers are just a list of potential targets.
A spokesman for AP, which had two journalists targeted, told DailyMail.com: 'We are deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists, along with
