1 June 2024

AFTER PEGASUS WAS BLACKLISTED, ITS CEO SWORE OFF SPYWARE. NOW HE’S THE KING OF ISRAELI AI.

Georgia Gee

SHALEV HULIO, ONCE dubbed “Israel’s cyber bad boy,” has been working hard to remake himself. By all appearances, it’s been a big success.

Things were looking dicey a few years ago when his company, the Israeli firm NSO Group, rose to infamy. Its Pegasus spyware had been exposed as enabling human rights abuses. Eventually, NSO was blacklisted by the U.S. government, and in August 2022, Hulio resigned as CEO.

In the last two years, however, Hulio has become involved in a web of new cybersecurity ventures. He is back, it seems, and better than ever.

In November, in a video filmed at the Gaza Strip, Hulio announced his new startup, Dream Security, an AI firm focused on defending critical infrastructure.

In April, according to Israel’s largest newspaper, a co-founder of IntelEye — a company that monitors the “dark web” — identified his former NSO colleague Hulio as an investor. (Another IntelEye official later told The Intercept that Hulio isn’t a shareholder but refused to clarify further.)

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