ArmInfo.Authoritarian governments and various intelligence agencies have been able to spy on hundreds of human rights defenders, journalists and politicians for years using a spy program developed by the Israeli NSO Group. This is evidenced by the results of the "Project Pegasus" journalistic investigation, which lasted for several months, published on Sunday, July 18, by the German media participating in it.
The journalism consortium, which included 16 editions, including the German NDR, WDR, Suddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, as well as the human rights organizations Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, got a list of 50,000 telephone numbers - potential targets of surveillance - from several dozen countries. The list includes journalists from Azerbaijan.
In more than 1000 cases, it was possible to identify the owners of these numbers, among whom were high- ranking politicians, lawyers, journalists and human rights defenders from France, the USA, India, Morocco, Mexico, Hungary and a number of other countries, including well-known Azerbaijani opposition journalists Khadija Ismayilova and Sevinj Vagifgizi.
Some of these people were contacted by the investigators. Independent IT experts were provided with 44 randomly selected phones with operating systems iOS and Android, 37 of them were found to have traces of spyware. Apple smartphones are also vulnerable to it.
The NSO Group's statement said, that the firm's clients are exclusively official government organizations that use its products to fight terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, pedophiles and child kidnappers.
Earlier, there were suspicions that Pegasus could be used in the circle of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in 2018 in the building of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. NSO Group categorically denies this. The Pegasus Trojan can instantly install itself on the victim's phone after only one click on the link sent by the cybercriminals. After that, the user of the program gets full access to all files and applications on someone else's smartphone, including the camera and microphone. The existence of this program has been known since 2016, DW reports.