I agree that laws are the right way to deal with this - there will always be another vulnerability for bad actors to exploit; technical solutions are not the answer unless you want to move your smartphone at the pace and rigor of the Apollo program - but I three real challenges here:
1. If NSO enjoy the tacit support of the Israeli government, then they are effectively judgement proof, no different to crimeware businesses that enjoy the tacit support of the Russian government.
2. Major Western governments such as the US will support the Israeli government for "bigger picture" reasons, and potentially implicitly the NSO. Particularly if the NSO are "only" facilitating the torture and murder of journalists who upset the Saudi government. So again, whatever national laws or international agreements may be in place don't really matter. Much as you'll never see a Blackwater mercenary in front of the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, you'll never see the NSO charged anywhere.
3. More broadly, there have been solid international frameworks for cracking down on, for example, money laundering. The AMLAT treaties are quite effective for money laundering, not so much for finance of terrorism. No nation outside of Canada has designated ISIS-like organisations as terrorists, subject to finance controls, for example. Trying to get an effective, multilateral agreement on how to handle tools that many governments want cheap access to in order to attack their enemies will be quite the challenge.
1. If NSO enjoy the tacit support of the Israeli government, then they are effectively judgement proof, no different to crimeware businesses that enjoy the tacit support of the Russian government.
2. Major Western governments such as the US will support the Israeli government for "bigger picture" reasons, and potentially implicitly the NSO. Particularly if the NSO are "only" facilitating the torture and murder of journalists who upset the Saudi government. So again, whatever national laws or international agreements may be in place don't really matter. Much as you'll never see a Blackwater mercenary in front of the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, you'll never see the NSO charged anywhere.
3. More broadly, there have been solid international frameworks for cracking down on, for example, money laundering. The AMLAT treaties are quite effective for money laundering, not so much for finance of terrorism. No nation outside of Canada has designated ISIS-like organisations as terrorists, subject to finance controls, for example. Trying to get an effective, multilateral agreement on how to handle tools that many governments want cheap access to in order to attack their enemies will be quite the challenge.