Amazon Web Services shuts down Pegasus-owner NSO Group’s infrastructure

After the massive Pegasus spyware controversy, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is the Cloud arm of Amazon, has shut down infrastructure and accounts linked to the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.

In a statement to Motherboard, an AWS spokesperson said that “When we learned of this activity, we acted quickly to shut down the relevant infrastructure and accounts”.

Reports have surfaced on military-grade Pegasus spyware from Israeli firm NSO Group being used by governments around the world to snoop on more than 50,000 people in 50 countries including in India.

An Amnesty International probe had revealed that Pegasus compromised phones and routed data through commercial services like AWS and Amazon CloudFront.

Human rights activists, journalists, and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, according to an investigation into a massive data leak, the Guardian first reported.

The consortium’s analysis of the leaked data identified at least 10 governments believed to be NSO customers who were entering numbers into a system: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.

Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.

The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.

In India, reports suggest phone numbers of 40 journalists were targeted.