The maker of the powerful spy software allegedly used to hack the phones of various people around the globe says blaming the company is like "criticising a car manufacturer when a drunk driver crashes", the BBC reported. A NSO spokesperson told BBC: "If I am the manufacturer of a car and now you take the car and you are driving drunken and you hit somebody, you do not go to the car manufacturer, you go to the driver.

"We are sending the system to governments, we get all the correct accreditation and do it all legally. "You know, if a customer decides to misuse the system, he will not be a customer anymore. "But all the allegations and all the finger-pointing should be at the customer." NSO Group is facing international criticism, after reporters obtained a list of alleged potential targets for spyware, including activists, politicians and journalists. Investigations have begun as the list, of 50,000 phone numbers, contained a small number of hacked phones.