The company NSO Group which develops the monitoring software Pegasus has a very difficult road ahead of her. The US Department of Commerce has added NSO to its corporate blacklist, which essentially prohibits all commercial transactions.
The move prohibits US companies from doing business with the NSO unless expressly permitted. But this is unlikely, since the same law does not allow exceptions.
The NSO and the Israeli company Candiru (also blacklisted) are facing charges for allowing and facilitating espionage by authoritarian governments.
It is alleged that they provided software monitorings like the Pegasus NSO to "authoritarian governments" who used it to monitor activists, journalists and other critics in an effort to crush any political disagreement.
The latest round of trade bans announced by the Ministry also affects Russian firm Positive Technologies and Computer Security Initiative Consultancy of Singapore, which were accused of dealing in hacking tools.
The Commerce Department claims that it has evidence of NSO's actions, which is not encouraging for the company's future. Remember what happened to her Huawei, who is also a member of the blacklist. The company may not have closed, but it is difficult to operate without the support of the US market.
A representative of her NSO He told Engadget that the company was "disappointed" with the decision and claimed that its tools had helped the United States "prevent terrorism and crime". The NSO said it would seek the repeal of the ban and reiterated that it complied with the "strictest" human rights standards in the world.