The Rehabilitation of an Israeli Spyware Mogul
NSO Group became synonymous with the excesses of Israeli’s hacking-for-hire industry. Now its founder is back with a billion-dollar cybersecurity startup.
Shalev Hulio at Dream Security’s office in Tel Aviv.
Photographer: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for Bloomberg Businessweek“Tell us about a time you almost got into major trouble.” That was the icebreaker at a dinner of Israeli venture capitalists and entrepreneurs at a conference in the city of Eilat last spring. The guests regaled one another with tales of drunken teenage escapades and close encounters with cops. When it was his turn, a man in a black T-shirt tugged at his beaded bracelets and flashed a mischievous grin before mentioning a line on his résumé most people in the room probably already knew. “I’m the founder of NSO,” Shalev Hulio said with a shrug, drawing nervous laughter.
NSO Group, which Hulio helped start 15 years ago, is known for kicking off an existential crisis for the Israeli spyware industry, after researchers claimed that governments in some countries had used NSO’s Pegasus product to spy on journalists, human-rights activists and dissidents. NSO disputed the findings. Meta Platforms Inc. sued NSO in 2019, saying it had reverse-engineered the social media giant’s WhatsApp messaging service to distribute malicious software. Two years later the US government blacklisted NSO and pressured Israel to tighten restrictions on surveillance technology exports.