Five individuals with knowledge of the matter said Quadream
gained the ability last year, around the same time as the NSO Group, letting
the two companies break into iPhones without the user needing to click any
link.
Bill Marczak, a security researcher with Citizen Lab, told
Reuters that the company’s so-called “zero-click” abilities appeared to be “on
par” with NSO’s.
Three of the sources said NSO and Quadream’s exploits were
similar because they leveraged many of the same vulnerabilities hidden deep
inside Apple’s instant messaging platform and used a comparable approach to
plant malicious software on targeted devices, in order to gain unauthorized
access to data.
The exploits were so similar that when Apple fixed the
underlying flaws in September 2021 it rendered both NSO and Quadream’s software
ineffective, two people familiar with the matter told the news agency.
Quadream did not respond to Reuters’ repeated request for
comment.
A spokesperson for Apple declined to comment on Quadream or
say if it planned to take any action with regard to the company.
An NSO spokeswoman said the company “did not cooperate” with
Quadream, but that “the cyber intelligence industry continues to grow rapidly
globally.”
In November, Apple sued NSO Group for targeting the users of
its devices, claiming that NSO had violated Apple’s user terms and services
agreement. NSO has denied any wrongdoing.
NSO says it sells its software, Pegasus, only to governments
for the purpose of fighting crime and terrorism, and all sales require approval
from the Defense Ministry. While it says it has safeguards in place to prevent
abuse, NSO says it has no control over how a client uses the product and no
access to the data they collect. It says it has terminated several contracts
due to the inappropriate use of Pegasus.
EXCLUSIVE iPhone flaw exploited by second Israeli spy firm-sources https://t.co/CI8b8vpkI5 pic.twitter.com/Bl3xyS1deC
— Reuters Asia (@ReutersAsia) February 3, 2022
The company has been involved in numerous scandals in recent
years and has faced a torrent of international criticism over allegations it
helps governments, including dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, spy on
dissidents and rights activists.
But unlike NSO, Quadream has kept a lower profile despite
serving some of the same government clients. A source familiar with the company
told Reuters it has no website touting its business, and its employees have
been told to keep any reference to their employer off social media.
Quadream was founded in 2016 by Ilan Dabelstein, a former
Israeli military official, and by two former NSO employees, Guy Geva and Nimrod
Reznik, according to Israeli corporate records and two people familiar with the
business, the report said.
Its flagship product — similar to NSO’s Pegasus — is named
REIGN.
REIGN could take control of a smartphone, obtain instant
messages from services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, as well as
emails, photos, texts, and contacts, two product brochures from 2019 and 2020
showed.
REIGN’s “Premium Collection” capabilities included “real
time call recordings, camera activation — front and back,” and “microphone
activation,” one brochure said, according to the report.
The 2019 brochure said the cost for being able to launch 50
smartphone break-ins per year was $2.2 million, exclusive of maintenance costs.
But two sources familiar with the software’s sales said the price for REIGN was
typically higher, the report said.
Quadream and NSO Group have employed some of the same
engineering talent over the years, three people familiar with the matter said.
However, in line with NSO’s spokesperson, two of those sources said the
companies did not collaborate on their iPhone hacks, with each coming up with
their own ways to take advantage of vulnerabilities.
One of Quadream’s first clients was the Singaporean
government, two of the sources claimed. Documentation reviewed by Reuters
showed the company also pitched its software to the Indonesian government. It
was not clear if Indonesia became a client, the report said.
Several of Quadream’s buyers — including Saudi Arabia — have
also overlapped with NSO’s, four of the sources were quoted as saying.
Last year, it was reported that Quadream began working with
Saudi Arabia following the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Riyadh reportedly lost its license for NSO’s Pegasus, after it was allegedly
used in the lead-up to Khashoggi’s murder in 2018.
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