Worldwide probe finds tech by Israel’s NSO Group targeted media, politicians
Investigation by Guardian, Washington Post and other news outlets identifies more than 1,000 people in over 50 countries potentially hit by Herzliya firm’s Pegasus spy software
18 July 2021
An in-depth investigation by 17 major international news organizations published Sunday claims that the embattled Israeli cyber firm NSO Group has sold cellphone malware used to target journalists, activists and politicians in dozens of countries.
The use of the software, called Pegasus and developed by Israel’s NSO group, was reported on by The Washington Post, Le Monde, Die Zeit, the Guardian, Haaretz, PBS Frontline and many other news outlets who collaborated on an investigation into a data leak, alongside French journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.
The global investigation is titled the Pegasus Project.
The reporting focused on Pegasus, a spyware tool sold by NSO that it says is being used by dozens of governmental clients. The analysis carried out on a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers found that the list included people targeted by the governments of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India, and the United Arab Emirates.
Continue reading at www.timesofisrael.com
New details show how Pegasus was used to spy on political opponents
By Kevin Reed
Further details emerged on Monday about the nature and extent of the spyware operation called Pegasus that has been used by governments since at least 2016 to hack into the smartphones of thousands of journalists, activists and business and political figures around the world.
The existence of the secret spying software was exposed on Sunday by the French non-profit media group Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International—in cooperation with a reporting consortium that includes the Guardian, the Washington Post and 15 other media organizations—following a data breach of its developer, the Israeli-based cybersecurity firm NSO, several months ago.
Among the new revelations reported on Monday by the Guardian are the fact that at least 50 individuals close to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “including his wife, children, aides and doctor” were on the list of possible targets of the Pegasus spyware; Rahul Gandhi, the major political opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “was twice selected as a potential target in leaked phone number data”; the American daughter of the imprisoned Rwandan activist, Paul Rusesabagina, who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, “has been victim of multiple attacks using NSO spyware.”
Continue reading at www.wsws.org
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