Citizen Lab, a digital copyright watchdog group, warned British authorities on Monday that electronic devices connected to government networks, including the Prime Minister’s Office and parts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appear to be infected with Israeli spy software. Stated.
According to a blog post published by Citizen Lab, spy software is known as Pegasus, a product of Israeli cyber weapons dealer NSO Group.
“In 2020 and 2021, we observed multiple suspected cases of Pegasus spyware infection within the UK’s official network and confirmed that we had notified the UK Government,” the blog post said.
An NSO spokesperson said the claim was “false and could not be associated with NSO products for technical and contractual reasons.”
A spokesperson for the UK Government said, “We do not regularly comment on security issues.”
Citizen Lab said it believes that the targets associated with the Prime Minister’s Office were targeted by NSO clients in the United Arab Emirates, and that the UK Foreign Ministry hacks came from other countries such as Cyprus, Jordan and India.
Government spokesmen for the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, India and Cyprus did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
You can use Pegasus to remotely break into your iPhone and allow clients to deeply access the memory of the target phone or turn it into a recording device.
Citizen Lab has discovered evidence of compromised UK devices by monitoring Internet traffic and other digital signals to spy servers that control the Pegasus of various NSO clients.
“We have identified infections originating from these UK networks based on the various network scanning methods we use and have notified the relevant UK authorities of the suspicions during the follow-up,” Citizen Lab said. Ron Dabert, director of the company, wrote in a blog post. “We didn’t have access to any device and we didn’t have any information about the specific victim.”
Citizen Lab is known as one of the leading research groups on mercenary spyware in the cybersecurity industry.
Christopher Bing
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