Release: Israel Ministry of Justice (245 GB)
Release: Israel Ministry of Justice (245 GB)
800,000 emails and other documents. The files indicate Israel's ministry of justice acted to protect NSO Group, the creators of the Pegasus spyware, in its lawsuit against Meta/WhatsApp.
Our new release includes documents from the Israel Ministry of Justice released April 2024 by Anonymous For Justice. The dataset contains 800,000 emails in HTML format, more than 700,000 image files, 200,000 documents and thousands of spreadsheets and presentations. The Israeli state lobbied to Telegram to shut down many channels sharing the data, but DDoSecrets archived the release and shared it with other journalists from Forbidden Stories and their media partners.
This week, media partners published their research. Key findings according to Forbidden Stories:
During the ongoing WhatsApp vs. NSO lawsuit in California, the state of Israel seized documents from the offices of the Pegasus spyware vendor in Israel.
Israel also emitted a gag order on this seizure.
Forbidden Stories wrote one of the documents “shows that in 2020, NSO’s legal team believed that sensitive documents, such as its full customer list including ‘U.S. customers,’ contracts, or even information related to ‘the Jeff Bezos hack or Khashoggi killing’ could be among the files that might fall under the discovery” in the California court case.
The documents seized in Israel would appear to include documents requested by the court in the United States. The Israeli raid on the NSO office seemingly prevented the U.S. courts from gaining access to disclosure that WhatsApp’s lawyers won in motions in U.S. courts.
Donncha Ó Cearbhaill of Amnesty International’s Security Lab said:
“Israel has a duty to ensure Israeli companies do not cause or contribute to human rights violations anywhere in the world. These documents suggest that not only are they failing to do this but are actively trying to shield NSO Group from accountability for its role in severe human rights violations. Such revelations call into question Israel’s commitment to impartially regulate NSO Group and casts doubt on its ability to provide justice, truth and reparation to those affected by Pegasus spyware.”
This dataset leaked from the Ministry of Justice also has previously been subject to a gag order in Israel. In April, Haaretz reported a statement from Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, their CERT:
“After the dissemination of the materials relating to the Justice Ministry, an investigation was opened, and in this context, a gag order was imposed on details of the investigation as well as on the information that was taken”
The dataset has been added to the DDoSecrets search engine for journalists, Hunter. Researchers and journalists can get in touch to request access to Hunter. Access to Hunter is free for freelancers and independent researchers whose background can be verified. Institutional requestors may be asked to subscribe to our library card service to access our indexed data search tool. The public can also download the root data from this release and verify the documents in their original context.
Research
Israel maneuvered to prevent disclosure of state secrets amid WhatsApp vs NSO lawsuit (Forbidden Stories)
Israel’s attempt to sway WhatsApp case casts doubt on its ability to deal with NSO spyware cases (Amnesty International)
Wie Israel die Überwachungssoftware Pegasus zum Staatsgeheimnis machte (Der Standard)
Israel tried to frustrate US lawsuit over Pegasus spyware, leak suggests (The Guardian)
So versucht Israel, ein Staatsgeheimnis zu wahren (Der Spiegel)
Les manœuvres d’Israël pour dissimuler ses secrets d’Etat liés à du cyberespionnage (Radio France)
Wie Israel Geheimdokumente verschwinden ließ (Die Zeit)
Disclaimer
This dataset was released in the buildup to, in the midst of, or in the aftermath of a cyberwar or hybrid war. Therefore, there is an increased chance of malware, ulterior motives and altered or implanted data, or false flags/fake personas. As a result, we encourage readers, researchers and journalists to take additional care with the data. This is a standard disclaimer that will be added to all datasets in the Cyberwar category.
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