US investor consortium buys controlling stake in spyware developer NSO Group – News

A U.S. investor consortium has reportedly acquired a controlling stake in Israeli spyware developer NSO Group Ltd.

The company told News today that “an American investment group has invested tens of millions of dollars in the company and has acquired controlling ownership.” The valuation that NSO received in the deal and the names of the participating investors were not disclosed.

According to Calcalist, the consortium was led by Robert Simonds, the founder and chair of television studio STX Entertainment. Rumors of Simonds’ interest in buying NSO first emerged more than two years ago. The Guardian reported at the time that a firm owned by William Wrigley, an heir to the Wrigley’s chewing gum fortune, had performed due diligence on the spyware maker. Wrigley is reportedly a friend of Simonds.

The deal marks at least the third time that NSO has changed hands since launching in 2010. The company was first acquired in 2014 by private equity firm Francisco Partners. Two of NSO’s founders reportedly bought it back in 2019 with the help of a second private equity firm.

NSO develops the Pegasus spyware, which it reportedly sells to governments for $3 to $30 million. Pegasus was at the center of multiple controversies and lawsuits in recent years. In 2021, the U.S. Commerce Department placed NSO on its Entity List database of sanctioned companies after determining that foreign governments used its software to launch malicious cyberattacks.

One of the highest-profile hacking campaigns involving Pegasus came to light in 2019, when Meta Platform Inc. filed a lawsuit against NSO. The social media giant determined that hackers had used Pegasus to launch zero-click attacks against more than 1,000 WhatsApp users. A zero-click attack downloads malware without requiring any action on the victim’s part.

Earlier this year, a U.S. judge ruled that NSO must pay Meta $167 million in damages over the hacking campaign. A jury later increased that sum to $611 million. NSO was also ordered to reveal some of Pegasus’ source code. 

Another widely publicized Pegasus hacking campaign involved Apple Inc.’s iMessage app. According to Google LLC researchers, Pegasus used a flaw in one of iOS’ image compression features to launch a virtual central processing unit on infected devices. It then ran malware on that virtual CPU.

Both Apple and Meta have long patched the vulnerabilities that Pegasus used to spread malware. Internal documents that came to light during the WhatsApp hacking trial revealed NSO lost about $12 million in 2024. 

Image: NSO Group