Despite several legal complaints, the PEGASUS spyware has again been used to target journalists and lawyers.
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Despite the complaints of the victims, judicial procedures launched by two digital giants – Apple and WhatsApp – and the revelations of the press or non-governmental organizations, the PEGASUS spyware, marketed by the Israeli company NSO, and its Government customers continue to target human rights journalists and defenders.
In a report published on April 5, the Irish NGO Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab, a Cybersecurity Laboratory of the Canadian University of Toronto, reveal that the phones of four Jordanian lawyers and journalists were hacked. by NSO government clients between August 2019 and December 2021. According to the report, these attacks are probably the work of Jordanian intelligence agencies.
Of the four targeted people, Ahmed al-Neimat, a human rights defender is currently in prison. He had invested in the defense of the victims of the Al-Salt hospital scandal, where the lack of oxygen had provoked the death of at least seven people in March 2021. Member of the National Forum for the Defense of Freedoms, Avocado Malik Abu Orabi, who defends in particular Mr. Al-Neimat, was hacked ones. The third victim, Suhair Jaradat, is a journalist and advocate for women’s rights. A fourth target, a journalist, wanted to preserve anonymity.
The Pegasus software is able to infect smartphones, in particular the iPhone marketed by the Apple company, and to extract it with all the entire contents therein, or even to serve as a system of Remote listening by activating the microphone of the phone without owners.
Apple, privileged target
The hacks of December 2021, who targeted an iPhone, took place a few weeks after a complaint filed by the Giant of American Technology against Israeli Society. Apple accuses the “flagrant violations of US law” and asks US justice to prohibit NSO from using all its devices and services.
This complaint followed the identification by Citizen Lab, among the best spyware specialists, a vulnerability in Apple’s e-mail application that allows Pegasus to enter the devices. The American company subsequently warned dozens of victims of this flaw, after analyzing it.
“The fact that the targeting we have discovered took place after the broad advertising made around Apple’s trial is to be addressed; a company that would really respect these concerns would at least pause the operations of its Government customers , like Jordan, whose history of human rights violation have been widely documented, “note the editors of Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab.
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