Pegasus Spyware of Israel Firm NSO Group Being Used to Target Journalists, Activists, Government Officials

Israel-based NSO Group’s Pegasus is being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists, and political dissidents, according to an investigation by a global media consortium based on leaked targeting data.

The consortium, called Citizen Lab, said in a report on Tuesday that its researchers found evidence of more than 25 documented cases in which Pegasus was used to target the mobile phones of journalists, human rights advocates, and political dissidents.

The Citizen Lab investigation comes on the heels of an Israeli-led investigation that was published earlier this month. In its report, Israeli researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev showed that a computer infection campaign launched by a shadowy Israeli national security agency, known as “Pangea” or by its Hebrew acronym, AMAN, targeted at least 16 journalists around the world.

AMAN is a part of Israel’s secretive military wing, the Shin Bet, and is in charge of covert operations such as electronic surveillance. The group is known for its deep cover and for operating in the shadows of Israeli society, and few in Israel even know of its existence.

The AMAN report by the Ben-Gurion University researchers also noted the targeting of political dissidents. The findings were based on an investigation into two separate AMAN computer infections that infected the computer systems of two different individuals in Iran. In one case, the infection was traced to the IP address of a company in Israel known as the NSO Group.

The Ben-Gurion University researchers found the infection of a target with the NSO Group’s Pegasus software on January 14, 2017, and traced the infection to an IP address associated with a company called Onclarity. The report also found that Onclarity’s computer network was compromised on February 5, 2017.

“These are the same people that attacked the Iranian dissidents. Who knows what they’re doing?” the report’s co-author, Avner Ben-Zaken, told me by phone on Monday.

The Citizen Lab report offers additional information about the NSO Group’s Pegasus software. Pegasus is known for its ability to infect phones to allow remote access to their camera and other devices, as well as its ability to remotely control a target’s browser and the like. NSO claims its tool can prevent cybercriminals from using keyloggers and Trojans on a phone.

“This is really a new model of digital espionage—the targeting of dissidents and activists, as well as journalists, political figures, security officials, and more, for digital surveillance,” the report states. “Although the Israeli government is one of the world’s most prolific users of these technologies, and thus, should be a source of concern to civil liberties advocates, to this point, there has been relatively little discussion of these technologies and their implications in the West.”

According to The Guardian, after the recent AMAN report was released, the Israeli government and NSO officials denied the allegations of spying and denied using Pegasus against Iranian citizens. Last week, the paper reported that NSO also dismissed the Citizen Lab report, though the company issued a “formal response” to the report’s conclusions. “We did not use our technology to target any individual in Iran or elsewhere,” NSO said.

It's a good point, since Pegasus is primarily a smartphone app and the Citizen Lab doesn't point to any kind of specific attack. The report's authors did not provide any hard evidence that a citizen in Iran had the Pegasus malware placed on their phone. They did note that "NSA and GCHQ have publicly admitted that some NSA employees, and perhaps GCHQ personnel as well, have engaged in espionage operations against political activists."

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