By Michael Holden

LONDON, (Reuters) – The Israeli-based NSO Group terminated its agreement with the United Arab Emirates in order to make use of its powerful “Pegasus,” state spyware tool. Dubai’s ruler had been using the software to hack phones of his wife and others close to him, according to the lawyers.

Vice president and prime minister of UAE Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum ordered the hacking six mobile phones of Princess Haya bint al-Hussein’s lawyers. The High Court of England ruled that the judgment was public.

Hacking was committed during the couple’s multi-million-dollar custody battle in London over two of their children.

NSO was accused of violating UAE’s rules for using Pegasus. The sophisticated “wiretap” system that harvests data from specific mobile devices used by terrorists and major criminals to revoke its contracts with them.

NSO reports any suspicions of misuse to the appropriate authorities. NSO then investigates and alerts. NSO terminates.” NSO said after publication.

According to NSO, six past customers were shut down. The contracts had a total value of more than 300 million dollars. The NSO didn’t provide any details.

It was discovered that Haya had been hacked along with others, including Fiona Shackleton, Haya’s lawyer and a member of Britain’s House of Lords.

According to court documents, a cyber expert who was investigating the possibility of using Pegasus to attack a UAE activist realized that the phones had been hacked. He then passed the information on to the court.

According to the judgement, Cherie Blair was also a prominent British lawyer who had been hired by NSO as an adviser to human rights. She was informed by senior NSO managers about the hacking.

“During a conversation I had with NSO’s senior manager, I asked him whether his client was the big or small state. The manager replied that it was the smaller state. I then took this to mean the state of Dubai,” Blair (wife of Tony Blair), stated in a statement before the court.

PROBLEM

Blair stated to Shackleton, that NSO had stopped the country using Pegasus immediately and that he had sought answers.

Charles Geekie, Haya’s attorney, stated that Cheri Blair told them that if the software wasn’t being used to identify genuine terrorists they would have a problem. Her client didn’t want to be linked to such behavior and she wanted to help.

NSO wrote to the court Dec. 14, last year to inform them that they had cancelled their contract with their client. They declined to identify the individual.

“As NSO Letter of December 2020 clearly shows, NSO has taken the extreme measure of ending its customer’s Pegasus use after their investigation,” Judge Andrew McFarlane from the Family Division of England and Wales stated in his ruling.

This step can be understood in commercial terms as being of great importance.

NSO’s Pegasus, which was illegally targeting journalists, human rights activists, and politicians, has been the center of international attention in recent months.

WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO in October 2019. It claimed that NSO helped government spies hack into phones of approximately 1,400 people on four continents. The targets included diplomats and political dissidents.

“NSO has in place many mechanisms – prior and post any sales process, to minimize the potential for misuse of the technology by our customers,” the company said.

“Regarding recent delusional stories, they were in large part flawed and misleading.