4 • 645 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Back in 2013, between the many revelations on mass surveillance abuses by the NSA coming from the trove of Snowden leaks, Americans also learned agents at the signals intelligence agency were snooping on their love interests. Dubbed LOVEINT (a play on ‘Love-Intelligence,’ apparently), a number of agents around the world were caught spying on their love interests using the godlike spy tools of the NSA.
Now an employee from an infamous surveillance company was caught trying to do the exact same. According to four sources, a former employee of NSO Group—the surveillance firm out of Israel whose hacking technology was reportedly used on the phones of associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi—was caught using the company’s hacking tool to target a love interest.
While the controversial company did immediately fire the employee, it's yet another example of how powerful surveillance tools are still being abused by the very people entrusted with wielding them. Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox is on this week’s CYBER to discuss the story.
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0:00.0 | Tann, it's got the code it's going to launch. |
0:11.0 | It's a unit system. |
0:13.0 | I know this. |
0:15.0 | It's all the files of the whole park. |
0:17.0 | It tells you everything. |
0:19.0 | Sir, he's uploading the virus. Eagle One. The package is being delivered. |
0:24.6 | Spies at the NSA did it, and now it looks like a private cyber spy did it too. |
0:29.6 | What is it, you might ask? |
0:31.6 | Using espionage-level spy tools meant for hacking, infiltrating, and exfiltrating data from state-level targets on a romantic |
0:38.9 | interest. And now, an employee from an infamous surveillance company was caught doing the exact same. |
0:45.0 | According to the latest Joseph Coxcoop, a former employee of NSO Group, yes, the surveillance firm |
0:50.5 | out of Israel whose hacking technology was reportedly used on the phones of associates |
0:54.8 | of murder journalists Jamal Khashoggi was caught using the company's hacking tool to target |
1:00.0 | a love interest. While the controversial company did immediately fire the employee, it's yet |
1:05.7 | another example of how powerful surveillance tools are still being used and abused by the very |
1:10.8 | people entrusted |
1:11.8 | with wielding them. Cox is on this week's show to discuss the story. |
1:19.7 | So, Joseph, the coronavirus pandemic continues, but so does the cybersecurity beat and all the things |
1:26.3 | that you continuously find about companies |
1:29.0 | and governments. And in this iteration, so it's back to an old friend, somebody who keeps |
1:35.1 | showing up on the show, NSO Group. How do we know them? |
1:40.0 | NSO Group, they've been well known in the security industry and sort of the offensive hacking |
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