NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware Used to Hack UK Prime Minister's Office
Pegasus, a notorious spyware strain from an Israeli company called NSO Group, was allegedly used to hack smartphones belonging to the UK government, including a device at the prime minister’s office.
The findings come from Citizen Lab, a watchdog group in Canada that’s been investigating NSO Group’s activities for years. On Monday, the group announced it had notified the UK government about the Pegasus infections in 2020 and 2021 when they were first detected.
The spyware infections ensnared a phone at UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office and multiple devices at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development office. “We suspect this included the exfiltration of data,” Bill Marczak tells The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow.
The infection at Johnson's office occurred on July 7, 2020. However, UK investigators were unable to determine which phone was compromised, which suggests the Pegasus spyware had deleted itself by then.
Nevertheless, Citizen Lab tells The New Yorker it noticed the Pegasus infection by looking at the spyware’s server data. The watchdog group concluded that a client of NSO Group, the United Arab Emirates, is likely behind the hack of the prime minister’s office.
It’s not entirely clear how the phone was compromised. But the Pegasus spyware is sometimes capable of zero-click attacks, which take over a device simply by sending a malicious text message to the targeted smartphone.
The other spyware infections that targeted the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development office were connected to NSO Group’s clients in the UAE, India, Cyprus, and Jordan. Citizen Lab notes these infections may have targeted phones from UK government personnel who work abroad and use foreign SIM cards.
Citizen Lab issued the
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