Probe finds spyware used on journalists, activists

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

From a list of more than 50,000 cell phone 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, the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the Financial Times.

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 reiterated its claim that it only sells to governments for use against terrorists and major criminals. Critics call those claims dishonest and say repeated abuse of Pegasus spyware highlights the nearly complete lack of regulation of the private global surveillance industry.

The source of the leak — and how it was authenticated — was not disclosed. While a phone number’s presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack

a device, the consortium said it believed the data represented potential targets of NSO’s government clients. The Post said it identified 37 hacked smartphones on the list. The Guardian, another consortium member, reported that Amnesty had found traces of Pegasus infections on the cell phones of 15 journalists who let their phones be examined after discovering their number was in the leaked data.

The consortium’s “Pegasus Project” reporting bolsters accusations that not just autocratic regimes but democratic governments, including India and Mexico, have used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware for political ends.

Pegasus infiltrates phones to vacuum up personal and location data and surreptitiously control the smartphone’s microphones and cameras. In the case of journalists, that lets hackers spy on reporters’ communications with sources.