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Britain Sounds Alarm on Spyware, Mercenary Hacking Market


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The NSO Group logo on a smartphone lying on a keyboard.

Reuters has previously documented how NSO Group software has been used to target the phones of American diplomats and European Union officials.

Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

British officials are sounding the alarm over the widespread abuse of surveillance software and hackers-for-hire, saying that thousands of people were being targeted each year by an industry they described as posing an increasingly unpredictable threat.

Britain's National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC), part of its GCHQ eavesdropping spy agency, said in a report published on Wednesday that the mercenary hacking market was offering products that were on par with government hacking groups.

"There is another new front opening, as we see more and more adversaries able to buy and sell sophisticated cyber tools and spyware like Pegasus," senior British minister Oliver Dowden told an NCSC conference in Belfast on Wednesday, referring to spyware made by Israel's NSO Group.

From Reuters
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