QuaDream was founded in 2016 by Ilan Dabelstein, a former Israeli military official, and by two former NSO employees, Guy Geva and Nimrod Reznik, according to Israeli corporate records and two people familiar with the business. Reuters could not reach the three executives for comment.
Like NSO's Pegasus spyware, QuaDream's flagship product - called REIGN - could take control of a smartphone, scooping up instant messages from services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, as well as emails, photos, texts and contacts, according to two product brochures from 2019 and 2020 which were reviewed by Reuters.
REIGN's “Premium Collection” capabilities included the "real time call recordings", "camera activation - front and back" and "microphone activation", one brochure said.
Prices appeared to vary. One QuaDream system, which would have given customers the ability to launch 50 smartphone break-ins per year, was being offered for $2.2 million exclusive of maintenance costs, according to the 2019 brochure. Two people familiar with the software's sales said the price for REIGN was typically higher.
Over the years, QuaDream and NSO Group employed some of the same engineering talent, according to three people familiar with the matter. Two of those sources said the companies did not collaborate on their iPhone hacks, coming up with their own ways to take advantage of vulnerabilities.
Several of QuaDream's buyers have also overlapped with NSO's, four of the sources said, including Saudi Arabia and Mexico - both of whom have been accused of misusing spy software to target political opponents.
One of QuaDream's first clients was the Singaporean government, two of the sources said, and documentation reviewed by Reuters shows the company's surveillance technology was pitched to the Indonesian government as well. Reuters couldn't determine if Indonesia became a client.
Mexican, Singaporean, Indonesian and Saudi officials did not return messages seeking comment about QuaDream.
Israeli Spyware Vendor QuaDream to Shut Down Following Citizen Lab and Microsoft Expose
MHA’s tech agency awards limited tender of S$17.8m to Israeli company selling “phone hacking” software and devices
SINGAPORE — The Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) has awarded a limited tender of S$17.7 million to a company headquartered in Israel for its forensic software licenses and services.
The limited tender, entitled “Entreprise level agreement for Cellebrite forensic software licenses and services for (5+5) years” was awarded by HTX to Cellebrite Asia Pacific Ltd on 19 December.
The reason given for the tender being limited to the company on the Singapore tender platform, GeBiz, was that the “products and services can only be provided by a particular supplier”.
HTX is a statatory board established in December 2019 under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), said to better secure Singapore's science and technology capabilities.
It states on its website that it leverages on the latest technologies and in-depth specializations to integrate a full range of science and technology (S&T) capabilities — such as Digital and Information Forensics — in homeland security to keep Singapore safe and secure.
The winning tenderer is one of the fourteen offices that Israesli company, Cellebrite operates. It is a digital forensic intelligence company known for its phone-hacking technology.
The Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) that it supplies, allows users to break into password-protected phones and retrieve all the information they contain.
This technology does not allow remote hacking and requires physical access to the phone.
In some cases, it has been used to extract the contents of devices seized during illegal examinations of journalists and human rights advocates such as Uganda, Botswana, India, and Saudi Arabia.
Even after Cellebrite said it withdrew from China and Hong Kong, an Intercept investigation has found, police on the mainland continued to buy the company’s UFED products, which allow officers to break into phones in their possession and siphon off data.
A lot more at https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2022/12/24/mhas-tech-agency-awards-limited-tender-of-s17-8m-to-israeli-company-selling-phone-hacking-software-and-devices/
Does that mean auntie Sylvia Lim's phone was really hacked by the G?
https://goodyfeed.com/sylvia-lim-claim-phone-hacked-shanmugam/
Why is there a need to purchase foreign spying software when we already have the almighty TraceTogether program?
More juicy nuggets:
• Wikileaks: Singapore firm with government ties bought cyber snooping software
• Singapore: A 2019 Intelligence Online report mentions that Candiru was active in soliciting business from Singapore’s intelligence services.
• SG banned: Israel restricts cyberweapons export list by two-thirds, from 102 to 37 countries
Hardly surprising, if you ask me.
😲😲😲
Israel's next blockbuster export after the Uzi 9mm. Nice.