Cybersecurity
Spyware Trade Grows Amid Claims Activists and Bezos Targeted
- Calls for tougher controls on industry with often fuzzy rules
- Companies maintain technology used to fight crime, terrorism
Jeff Bezos
Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg
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The alleged theft of data from the iPhone X used by billionaire Jeff Bezos has cast an unflattering light on the swiftly growing and highly secretive cottage industry of software developers specializing in digital surveillance.
NSO Group and Hacking Team are among the most well-known surveillance companies. Both have sold tools to law enforcement agencies that are used to covertly infect targeted mobile phones and computers with spyware, which can record calls, harvest text messages, take photographs using the device’s inbuilt camera and record audio using its microphone.