Probe exposes spying

Across 50 nations, more than 600 officials, 189 journalists were malware targets.

An investigation by a global media consortium based on leaked targeting data provides further evidence that militarygrade malware from Israel-based NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire outfit, is being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents.

From a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Parisbased journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organizations, journalists were able to identify more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries who were allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance.

They include 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state, according to The Washington Post, a consortium member. The journalists work for organizations including The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.

Amnesty also reported that its forensic researchers had determined that NSO Group’s flagship Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the phone of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

NSO Group denied in an emailed statement that the data on which the report was based was leaked from its servers “since such data never existed on any of our servers.” It called the Forbidden Stories report “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.” The company says it only sells to governments for use against terrorists and major criminals.