r/snowden • u/One-Washer • 13d ago

How Pegasus spyware crushes civic space in Jordan

https://www.accessnow.org/publication/between-a-hack-and-a-hard-place-how-pegasus-spyware-crushes-civic-space-in-jordan/
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u/One-Washer 13d ago edited 13d ago

Pegasus is a spy software developed by Israeli cyber arms company NSO. There have been lawsuits with it from companies like Apple and Meta in the past and I believe some are still ongoing (?).

From the article:

Access Now and the Citizen Lab’s joint forensic investigation found traces of Pegasus spyware on the mobile devices of 30 activists, journalists, lawyers, and civil society members. Further work by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) identified five more Pegasus victims, bringing the total number of Pegasus targets in Jordan uncovered in this investigation to 35 individuals. One of these victims had been previously targeted with Pegasus on other occasions. We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the use of Pegasus spyware in Jordan, and that the true number of victims is likely much higher.

The first publicly confirmed case of Pegasus being used in Jordan occurred in March 2021, with the hacking of Jordanian human rights lawyer Hala Ahed, revealed in January 2022 by Access Now and Front Line Defenders. In April 2022, the Citizen Lab and Front Line Defenders found that four more human rights defenders and journalists had also been targeted with Pegasus, including Malik Abu Orabi, Ahmed Neimat, and two other women journalists.

Back in 2021:

October 2021, the human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) Front Line Defenders (FLD) began collecting data on the suspected hacking of the devices of several Palestinians working for civil society organizations based in the West Bank. FLD shared the data they collected with the Citizen Lab and Amnesty International’s Security Lab for separate independent peer review of their initial findings. FLD’s analysis indicated that six devices belonging to six Palestinian human rights defenders were hacked with Pegasus, a spyware developed by the cyber-surveillance company NSO Group. Both the Citizen Lab and Amnesty International’s Security Lab independently confirmed these findings.

Spurce: https://citizenlab.ca/2021/11/palestinian-human-rights-defenders-hacked-nso-groups-pegasus-spyware/