US Government Expands Sanctions Against Spyware Maker Intellexa

The U.S. government said Monday that it has issued fresh financial sanctions against five individuals and a corporate entity associated with spyware-making consortium Intellexa, months after the government sanctioned its founder. From a report: In its latest statement, the U.S. Treasury said it sanctioned the five people, including senior Intellexa executives and associates, who are alleged to be involved in the sale of Intellexa's phone spyware, dubbed Predator, to authoritarian governments. Predator can be used to hack into fully patched phones nearly invisibly, allowing the organization that deployed the spyware to obtain complete access to the target's device, including their private messages and real-time location. The Treasury said the spyware has been used to target U.S. government officials, journalists, and opposition politicians.

The sanctions include Felix Bitzios, who owns an Intellexa consortium company that the Treasury says was used to supply Predator spyware to an unnamed foreign government; Merom Harpaz and Panagiota Karaoli, who hold senior positions in Intellexa's corporate structure, according to the Treasury; and Andrea Nicola Constantino Hermes Gambazzi, who the Treasury says was involved in processing transactions for companies within Intellexa's consortium. The Treasury added that the Aliada Group, a company based in the British Virgin Islands and a member of the Intellexa group of companies, was also sanctioned for enabling tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the spyware-making consortium. A senior U.S. government official told reporters during a background call on Monday that the latest round of sanctions were part of the government's ongoing effort to target the commercial spyware industry. The U.S. official said the government was tracking money flows and movements to determine what entities might be trying to avoid or circumvent the sanctions.

They made a big mistake.

[Seven Spirals]

They sold to someone besides Uncle Sam, now he's in jilted lover mode. These guys are toast.

Re:

[Malay2bowman]

"If I can't have her, nobody can", said many a murderous abuser, including Uncle Sam.

It is not illegal

[flyingfsck]

It appears to me that the makers of the tool did not do anything illegal. It is the users of the tool that should be charged. This like sanctioning the maker of a crowbar after a break-in, while ignoring the burglars.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

A crowbar isn't a spyware tool. If you sold fully working gallows explicitly intended for hanging people to people who are not officially sanctioned to perform executions, you might have a problem with law enforcement. I would've mentioned military firearms but the USA has some funny ideas about who should have those too.

Re:

[flyingfsck]

The original use of a gallow is to load/unload wagons. Stringing up scoundrels with it is a secondary use, popularized by spaghetti western movies like Once Upon a Time In The West.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Maybe in the deepest backwaters of southern US states where the local sheriff still wears bed sheets & leaves "strange fruit dangling in the summer breeze" out at night. In the civilised world, "gallows" exclusively means for executing people.

Buy American-made

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... to authoritarian governments.

The US government spent decades selling guns to "authoritarian governments", with free lessons on how to point them at a starving populace, so said governments would buy only American-made goods. (For a few countries, the USA sold the guns to the other side, the freedom-fighters, for a similar consequence: Although victorious freedom-fighters ignored American-made.) In that situation, the guns wouldn't be pointed at Americans, spyware doesn't offer the same lack of consequences.

This is the USA punishing people who act the same as it does.

Re:

[Ormy]

This is the USA punishing people who act the same as it does.

Exactly. What is the difference between Intellexa and NSO group (who make the Pegasus spyware)? As far as I can tell, literally nothing except for the fact that the list of governments whom are supplied by NSO group includes the US. Which begs the further question, why isn't the US a customer of Intellexa? Maybe Intellexa refused to sell to the US for some reason?

Regardless of the answer, global geopolitics in the information age is looking more and more like the kind of immature arguing one might expect

Apple and Android should be fined

[OppMan29]

for these security holes they are exploiting....unless of course uncle Sam asked for them.

No mention of Israel.

[BardBollocks]

Russian hackers = Russia
Chinese hackers = China
Israeli hackers =

Obvious bullshit for 'enemies' - Obvious protection for 'allies' - even ones currently perpetrating a 'Plausible Genocide'.