[ianmiers]

NSO group is ex unit 8200, which is military signals intelligence. So in American terms, it's the NSA not the CIA. The distinction is important in a country with mandatory military service. You get a large number of people who go through, get trained, and then leave because it never was a career. A number of them take their skills to the private sector.

Mossad, on the other hand, is a civilian intelligence service and I'm told there's a strong tradition that its members don't freelance their services after leaving.

[belter]

Not sure the distinction is relevant in a country with such a small intelligence community:

"The Israeli Unit 8200 An OSINT-based study" https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/c...

"Most of this data is shared internally across the IDF (as well as sometimes externally, cf. 3.3 below) to the Unit’s relevant stakeholders, whether combat troops, decision-makers or other intelligence agencies such as Mossad. Or as Yair Cohen, who served 33 years in Unit 8200, the last five (2001–05) as its commander, put it, "90% of the intelligence material in Israel is coming from 8200 […] there isn't a major operation, from the Mossad or any intelligence security agency, that 8200 is not involved in"

>"...Mossad, on the other hand, is a civilian intelligence service and I'm told there's a strong tradition that its members don't freelance their services after leaving..."

Tradition is not what it used to be:

"Black Cube: The Bumbling Spies of the ‘Private Mossad’"

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/black-cube-the-bumbling-spi...

"...Despite some missteps, Black Cube “has to turn clients away because it cannot service all the demands,” said Mr. Halevy, a former head of the Mossad, an Israeli government intelligence agency. He said Black Cube has worked on 300 cases since being founded in 2010 by two former Israeli military intelligence officers, Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus..."

"Harvey Weinstein hired ex-Mossad agents to suppress allegations, report claims"

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/07/harvey-weinstei...

[ianmiers]

It's an important distinction. The fact that huge numbers of people rotate through the hacking side of 8200 (like the NSA, vast majority of 8200 members don't work on that) is what drives the supply.

Intelligence services typically have less turnover. Though that is changing, particularly for NSA, where people leave to go to contractors.

Also, frankly, describing NSO as ex Mossad just makes phone malware sound much more complicated than it is and much harder to stop. At the end of the day, its software, written by people in much the same way any software is written. It just exploits mistakes other software devs made so that it can run.

[compsciphd]

"by two former Israeli military intelligence officers, Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus."

emphasis on "military intelligence officers" i.e. not mossad. this is like mixing up the CIA and FBI. to an outsider they might appear the same, but that's not really the case.

[belter]

"Ilan Mizrachi, a former deputy head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, said that he sees nothing inherently wrong with former intelligence operatives working for civilian enterprises. “Some people I know went into journalism, some are consultants,” he said. “Among many other professions, some work for companies like Black Cube.”

https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-israel-black-cube2017110...

[belter]

Quote from the article: "Despite some missteps, Black Cube “has to turn clients away because it cannot service all the demands,” said Mr. Halevy, a former head of the Mossad, an Israeli government intelligence agency..."

[scatters]

Which determines that he is qualified to speak about Black Cube, not that he works for Black Cube. There's a difference.

[belter]

Please read the article first...

"Efraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, an Israeli intelligence service, is a member of Black Cube’s advisory board."

[compsciphd]

ok, those are better pull quotes than the original :) just noting that mossad and aman (military intelligence) are 2 different things.