NSO Group said on Wednesday that it was in talks with a number of US funds, confirming media reports that it was discussing a sale of its assets.
Bloomberg News reported that NSO, maker of the Pegasus cellphone hacking software, was in talks to sell its assets to the US venture capital firm Integrity Partners, citing people with knowledge of the negotiations.
An NSO Group’s spokesperson said, “The report about the financials of NSO Group is speculative and filled with inaccuracies. The company generates great interest with a few US-based funds, and the company is in talks with them all. Any other speculation is false.”
The report comes a day after NSO chairman Asher Levy stepped down and a week after a major scandal in Israel about the Israeli Police using NSO and other spyware against Israeli citizens in non-terror regular criminal cases.
Besides those latest developments, NSO has been reeling since July 2021, when a worldwide media campaign against it alleging a range of abuses by its customers against heads of state, journalists and human rights activists, led to it being blacklisted by the US Commerce Department.
Following the US decision, the Israeli government reduced by two-thirds the number of countries NSO and other cyberattack firms would be permitted to sell their technology to.
All of this led to reports that NSO might have trouble keeping up with its loan obligations in 2022 despite having been known as a top cyberattack firm for combating terrorists for several years.