NSO Group threatens to sue Israeli newspaper Calcalist

NSO claims that the report offered by Calcalist does not include 'any evidence to support the claims'

Israel's NSO Group sent a letter on Thursday to the country's financial daily Calcalist over its latest report into the company's Pegasus spyware.

Calcalist reported Thursday that NSO prevents local documentation of its actions, virtually covering its tracks and preventing investigations.

NSO denied that customers are allowed to erase the data collected with Pegasus, saying the reports do not include "any evidence to support the presented sensational claims," Haaretz reported.

The company wrote in its letter to Calcalist that each version of Pegasus "includes full documentation of all the actions carried out with it," adding that the data logs were designed to save documents for legal purposes, according to Haaretz.

NSO also denied that it offered versions that do not record its actions, which Calcalist claimed in its report.

Calcalist reported last Monday that Israel's Police used Pegasus to hack the phones of several public figures, including protest leaders, journalists, mayors, government’s employees and associates of Netanyahu, including co-defendants and key witnesses in his ongoing corruption trial.

Pegasus software allows users to access mobile phones infected with the spyware remotely.

It exploits security vulnerabilities in cellular operating systems to retrieve a device’s contents - from messages to photos, call history, and location data - and was sold to intelligence and law enforcement agencies worldwide.