SAN FRANCISCO: An Italian company's hacking tools were used to spy on Apple and Android smartphones in Italy and Kazakhstan, Alphabet's Google said in a report on Thursday .
"These vendors are enabling the proliferation of dangerous hacking tools and arming governments that would not be able to develop these capabilities in-house," Google said. "RCS Lab personnel are not exposed, nor participate in any activities conducted by the relevant customers," it told Reuters in an email, adding that it condemned any abuse of its products.
The industry came under a global spotlight when the Israeli surveillance firm NSO’s Pegasus spyware was in recent years found to have been used by multiple governments to spy on journalists, activists, and dissidents. On its website, RCS Lab describes itself as a maker of"lawful interception" technologies and services including voice, data collection and"tracking systems". It says it handles 10,000 intercepted targets daily in Europe alone.