By Dov Lieber

TEL AVIV -- NSO Group, the Israeli company behind Pegasus spyware, says a group of investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds has acquired a controlling stake in the firm, which has named a former Trump official to lead an effort to restore its battered reputation.

The company, which has faced lawsuits and U.S. government sanctions since revelations that its technology was used to spy on political dissidents, human-rights advocates, journalists and American officials, declined to disclose the purchase price.

NSO's new executive chairman, David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and onetime bankruptcy lawyer for President Trump, said he wants to use his ties to the Trump administration to help rebuild the company's spyware business in the U.S.

"If the administration, as I expect they'll be, is receptive to considering any opportunity that might keep Americans safer, it will consider us," said Friedman, who splits his time between Florida and Israel.

Friedman and NSO said Simonds, the chairman of STX Entertainment, declined to comment for this article. Friedman said he and Simonds want to use NSO's eavesdropping and surveillance technologies to "achieve a safer world."

NSO's flagship product, Pegasus, has used WhatsApp to infiltrate phones without the target having to do or tap on anything. The spyware has also been sent to phones via links in messages, according to security researchers.

Pegasus can turn a smartphone into a silent spying device by gaining access to its files, messages, microphone and camera, they say.

In 2021, the Biden administration placed NSO on an export-prohibition list that restricted the firm from obtaining some types of technology from the U.S. In 2023, President Biden signed an executive order banning government agencies and departments from using commercial spyware that "poses risks to national security or has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses around the world."

Unless Biden's executive order is rescinded, it is unlikely U.S. government agencies would do business with NSO.

Since its legal troubles began, the company has struggled financially and changed hands a few times. It mulled pivoting away from spyware but says it has since refocused on cyber offensive capabilities and Pegasus remains the company's key product.

"They have been struggling and looking for capital. This change of control and ownership brings with it sufficient capital to maintain the business," Friedman said.

Intelligence agencies such as the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters routinely use hacking tools. NSO often sells such cyber capabilities to countries that don't have their own.

NSO's products would be "additive" to existing technologies used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Friedman said. He said he's aiming to recruit U.S. law-enforcement agencies, including police forces, among the company's customers.

In March 2022, former FBI Director Chris Wray said in congressional testimony that the bureau had bought NSO Group technology to test it and didn't use it for operational purposes.

As ambassador to Israel, Friedman oversaw the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and the negotiation of the Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and some Muslim-majority countries.

Friedman said his pitch to the U.S. government is that NSO's products will make America safer. NSO says its products can be used by government agencies to fight terrorism and crime by allowing them access to encrypted messaging systems such as WhatsApp.

The company says it doesn't know who its clients target with Pegasus. But it said it terminates contracts when it learns of abuses and has taken measures to stem abuse and vet potential clients. Friedman said preventing abuses would come down to finding trustworthy clients.

The power of Pegasus creates "unbearable temptation for abuse," said John Scott-Railton, a researcher with the Citizen Lab, an academic research group that studies state-sponsored cyber espionage.

"I can't think of something more chilling for Americans' basic rights and freedom than some police department reaching into their lives and dumping it on the table in front of a bunch of cops," said Scott-Railton.

He said despite vows by the firm to prevent abuse, cases continue to emerge. Two journalists from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, a Serbian network of investigative journalists, recently received links on the Viber messaging app infected with Pegasus, according to researchers at Amnesty International.

Friedman said "the NSO of today is a far more careful company in how it licenses its technology than it was five six years ago."

From 2020 through 2024, NSO spent $7.6 million on lobbying efforts in Washington, according to Open Secrets, a government transparency group that tracks political spending.

Those efforts bore little fruit, said Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He said the fact that NSO's technology was used to spy on U.S. officials abroad turned opposition to the company into a bipartisan issue.

NSO still faces significant legal hurdles. In 2019, WhatsApp's parent company, now called Meta, sued NSO over what it alleged was a breach of its servers to install NSO's malware on target devices. In July, the six-year trial came to an end, with a federal jury in California ordering NSO to pay Meta $168 million in damages.

In October, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California reduced the fine NSO was ordered to pay Meta down to $4 million. But in the same ruling, the judge ordered NSO to stop targeting WhatsApp, in a move that the company said during its defense could put it out of business.

NSO is appealing the decision against targeting WhatsApp, and is filing for a stay.

"It's a meaningful setback, not only for NSO Group, but potentially for the people who benefit from this surveillance," said Friedman of the injunction against targeting WhatsApp.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 09, 2025 08:44 ET (13:44 GMT)

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