Activists, journalists and opponents around the world have been spied on using software developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, according to an investigation published Sunday (July 18) which reinforces long-standing suspicions about the company.
Read also: On the trail of spyware sold by Israel to the Gulf countries
This company, founded in 2011 north of Tel Aviv markets the Pegasus spyware which, if it is introduced into a smartphone, allows you to retrieve messages, photos, contacts, and even listen to calls. of its owner.
NSO Group has regularly been accused of playing into the hands of authoritarian regimes, but has always claimed that its software is only used to obtain intelligence against criminal or terrorist networks.
The survey published on Sunday by a consortium of seventeen international media, including the French dailies
Le Monde
, British
The Guardian
, and American
The Washington Post
, is undermining its credibility.
To read also: Spying by the NSA from Denmark: Macron and Merkel demand "complete clarity"
Their work is based on a list obtained by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, which they say includes 50,000 phone numbers that NSO clients have selected since 2016 for potential surveillance.
It includes the numbers of at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists, or 65 business leaders ... according to the analysis carried out by the consortium, which has located many numbers at Morocco, Saudi Arabia or Mexico.
On this list, there is also the number of the Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto, shot a few weeks after his appearance on this document.
Foreign correspondents from several major media, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, France 24, Mediapart, El Pais, or AFP are also part of it.
Other names of personalities on the list - which includes a head of state and two heads of government - will be disclosed in the coming days.
37 aircraft attacked
Journalists from the "
Pegasus Project
" met some of the holders of these numbers and recovered 67 phones which were the subject of a technical expertise in an Amnesty International laboratory.
It confirmed an infection or attempted infection with NSO Group spyware for 37 devices, including 10 located in India, according to reports released on Sunday.
Two of the phones belong to women close to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in 2018 in his country's consulate in Istanbul by a commando of agents from Saudi Arabia, they write.
For the other 30, the results are not convincing, often because the owners of the numbers have changed phones.
"
There is a strong temporal correlation between when the numbers appeared on the list and when they were placed under surveillance,
" said the Washington Post.
This analysis comes in addition to a study, conducted in 2020, by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which confirmed the presence of the Pegasus software in the phones of dozens of employees of the Al-Jazeera channel in Qatar.
WhatsApp also acknowledged in 2019 that some of its users in India had been spied on by this software.
"
Erroneous assumptions
"
The NSO group has, as always, “
firmly denied the false accusations made
” in the investigation. It "
is full of erroneous assumptions and uncorroborated theories, the sources have provided information that has no factual basis
," he wrote on his site, specifying that he is considering filing a defamation complaint.
NSO is far from the only Israeli company to be suspected of supplying spyware to foreign governments with little regard for human rights, with the green light from the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Saito Tech Ltd's
"
DevilsTongue
"
software
, better known as Candiru, has been used against around 100 politicians, dissidents, journalists and activists, experts from Microsoft and Citizen Lab said Thursday.
Read also: Terrorist threat: the intense activity of the French secret services
Israeli-based companies like NICE Systems and Verint have provided technology to the secret police in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as well as to the security forces of Colombia, the NGO Privacy International estimated in 2016.
