Israel is not only a hub to IT technology, cybersecurity as we know it, but is also a hub for more than a hundred companies involved with criminal cyber activities.
Yes, the findings have been revealed by a Tel Aviv based newspaper ‘The Marker’ founded by a journalist Guy Rolnik. The news source is known to report sensational news with the cooperation of the International New York Times, Cybersecurity published.
According to a report published in ‘The Marker’, a firm named Candiru offers cyber attacks ( criminal cyber attacks ) as-a-service to anyone where one can sell and hire offensive cyber tools for hacking computer networks.
The firm is named after an Amazon fish ‘Candiru’ a fish that has the tendency to penetrate the human body through urethra when a person swims in water bodies, this firm is known to sell hacking technology to people who wants to spy on phones or computers.
As many 32 companies in the region offer this kind of service with a huge business in offensive cyber activity.
According to trade analysts, this business revenue alone generates $2 billion in sales per year.
Companies from Saudi Arabia, Cyber Intelligence firm NSO, Mexican companies are a few to be named as regular customers of the said company.
As per the firm’s sales policy, it doesn’t sell its services to some nations such as Africa, Australia, and the United States and has only customers from Western Europe and Asia.
The news source claims that NSO is also a customer of Candiru’s, however, the spokesperson of the government based intelligence firm has denied the claims.
Similar to Candiru, FinFisher is also a cyber firm which sells cyber attack tools on the dark web.
The 120+ estimated employees of these two companies have no social network presence as they are recruited only after they sign a strict confidentiality agreement.
NSO Group is a government-funded cybersecurity firm based in Herzliya, Israel. The firm’s objective is to provide authorized governments cyber tools to help them combat terror and online crime while the Pegasus software- a spying software is said to be a brainchild of this firm.
Employees who work for these companies are recruited from Israel Defense Forces 8200 Intelligence Unit and are reportedly paid a minimum 80,000 shekels or $21,000 as a fixed salary.