Israel's Controversial NSO Spyware Maker Fires 100 Workers, CEO Quits

NSO Group, the Israeli offensive cyber firm known for its infamous Pegasus spyware, is laying off about 100 workers and replacing its CEO, a company spokesperson confirmed, Omer Benjakob and Sagi Cohen reported for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Photo Insert: NSO founder and CEO Shalev Hulio poses for a photo with Eyal Blum and Ramon Eshkar.

CEO Shalev Hulio, one of NSO's three co-founders, is stepping down from his position and will now focus on finding a buyer for the firm after a deal to sell it to the American defense contractor L3Harris fell through due to opposition from both American and Israeli officials.

Yaron Shohat, who was chief operating officer, will take Hulio's place. A buyout by L3Harris would have turned the company into a US entity.

NSO said that it would also be letting go of about 100 of its 750 workers – about 13 percent of its staff.

The cyber firm claims that it expects to finish this year with a revenue of $150 million, but it has been in dire financial straits since the US Department of Commerce blacklisted it last November after it came to light that some African states used Pegasus software to spy on US State Department officials in Africa.

This was preceded by Project Pegasus, an investigative journalist consortium led by Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories and including Haaretz, which published a string of reports alleging misuse of the Pegasus spyware by regimes across the world.

After the publication of the Pegasus Project's research, the defense export oversight department of the Defense Ministry drastically reduced the list of states to which companies like NSO can market their products.

A number of Israeli cyber firms – among them smaller NSO competitors like Nemesis – began to close down after the oversight department refused to approve their new deals in the East and in Africa.

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