It was an unusual place for a tech company to announce a successful $33 million round of venture capital fundraising. But, on November 7, former NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio and two colleagues stood in the Gaza Strip, stared into a laptop’s built-in webcam, and did exactly that.

“We are here on the Gaza border,” said Hulio, the Israeli entrepreneur, on a little-noted YouTube video released by his new start-up, Dream Security. Hulio, a reservist who had been called up for duty, appeared in the video with a gun slung over his shoulder.

“It’s very emotional,” he said. “After all of us being here, some of us reserves, some of us helping the government in many other ways, I think that doing it here is a great message to the high-tech community and the people of Israel.”

Hulio, who stepped down from his role at NSO in August 2022, was sending a clear signal: He was back.

After a rocky few years, marred by revelations about the role of NSO’s spyware in human rights abuses and the company’s blacklisting by the U.S. government, Hulio and his team were using the moment — timed exactly one month after Hamas’s attack — to announce lofty ambitions for their new cybersecurity firm, Dream Security.

“Israeli high-tech is not only here to stay, but will grow better out of this,” said Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli American venture capitalist and Dream co-founder, in the promo video. “It’s going to deliver on time, wherever it’s needed, to whatever country or whatever company it’s needed at.”

Their new project is another cybersecurity company. Instead of phone hacking, though, Dream — an acronym for “Detect, Respond, and Management” — offers cyber protection for so-called critical infrastructure, such as energy installations.

Dream Security builds on the successful team NSO put together, with talent brought on board from the embattled spyware firm. At least a dozen of NSO’s top officials and staffers, along with an early investor in both NSO and Dream, followed Hulio to Dream since its founding last year.

Lawyers for Dream Security who responded to The Intercept’s request for comment said the companies were distinct entities. “The only connection between the two entities is Mr. Hulio and a small portion of talented employees who previously worked at NSO Group,” said Thomas Clare, a lawyer for Dream, in a letter. Liron Bruck, a spokesperson for NSO Group, told The Intercept, “The two companies are not involved in any way.”

Now, with so many NSO people gathered under a new banner, critics are concerned that their old firm’s scandals will be forgotten.

“It’s worrying,” said Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel at Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group. “It seems like a new way to whitewash NSO’s image and past record.”

At the same time, NSO Group is also using Israel’s war effort to try and revamp its own reputation. After Pegasus, NSO’s phone hacking software, was exposed for its role in human rights abuses and the firm was blacklisted in the U.S., the company suffered years of financial troubles. In the new year, it seemed to be bouncing back, with Israeli media reporting on its expansion and reorganization.

Clare, Dream’s lawyer, stressed that Hulio was no longer affiliated with NSO. “Currently, Mr. Hulio........

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