Biden administration announced on Wednesday, he put a new export limit on two hacked-for-rented companies – including the famous spyware company NSO Group – said their tool was used to “committing transnational repression.” Based on data targeting, the findings by the global media consortium earlier this year provide evidence that spyware from the NSO Group is allegedly used to infiltrate various devices, including journalists, activists and political opponents in 50 countries.
The US Commerce Department said the NSO Group and Candiru companies were added to the “list of entities,” which limited their access to US components and technology by requiring government permission to export.
The department said placing these companies on the list of entities was part of Biden’s administrative efforts to promote human rights in US foreign policy.
“The United States is committed to aggressively using export control to request the company’s responsibility, traffic, or use technology to carry out evil activities that threaten Cybersecurity members of civil society, dissidents, government officials, and organizations here,” Our Trade Secretary Gina Raimondo say in a statement.
A prominent Russian company, positive technology, and Singapore-based computer security initiative consultants are also placed on the list of trading “cyber tools used to get invalid access” to the IT system, the department said.
The Ministry of Finance puts sanctions on positive technology, which has international traces and extensive partnerships with heavyweight such as Microsoft and IBM, earlier this year.
The researchers said the method used by the NSO Group, the most famous hacked-for-rental company in the world, has grown so sophisticated so that it can now infect targeted cellphones without user interaction.
In July, Microsoft said it had blocked a tool developed by Candiru which was used to spy on more than 100 people around the world, including politicians, human rights activists, journalists, academics and political dissidents.