"spyware"

Apple announced Tuesday that it has sued Israel-based NSO Group over the use of its Pegasus spyware to attack Apple devices, the latest move in an escalating global campaign to curb surveillance abuses against smartphone users.

The United States on Wednesday added the Israeli spyware company NSO Group to its "entity list," a federal blacklist prohibiting the company from receiving American technologies, after determining that its phone-hacking tools had been used by foreign governments to "maliciously target" government officials, activists, journalists, academics and embassy workers around the world.

The ruler of Dubai used NSO Groups Pegasus spyware to hack the phones of his estranged wife, Princess Haya, and the closest members of her inner circle, a U.K. high court judgment released Wednesday shows.

Military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners.

Google is changing its policies next month to restrict advertising for spyware and other unauthorized tracking technology.

Technologists who discovered spyware made by an Israeli company targeting journalists in several authoritarian countries said they found the same spyware used against a Moroccan journalist three days after the company announced a policy against such uses.