Pegasus
NSO Group, the firm behind Pegasus spyware, has a new executive chairman who plans to use his ties to the Trump administration to improve the company’s reputation in the U.S. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton says that Pegasus creates “unbearable temptation for abuse” where “nobody […]
Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton speaks with TechCrunch about the proliferation of spyware use, and the effects it has on democracy. While it is ostensibly used to monitor criminals, Scott-Railton says that government spyware “needs to be treated like the threat to democracy and elections that it is.” Read more in TechCrunch.
In an interview with Alex Culafi on the Dark Reading Confidential podcast, Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert speaks about changes in the digital ecosystem over the past 25 years. Deibert notes he is “heartened” by the growth of the digital rights community, but has concerns about the “golden age of surveillance” today. The lack of […]
In an interview with What Bitcoin Did, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton discusses the proliferation of spyware and the repercussions of its use on victims. He explains how mass surveillance “ultimately leads to self-censorship,” with significant implications for our freedom. Watch here.
In a joint investigation with Access Now, we found that seven Russian and Belarusian-speaking independent journalists and opposition activists based in Europe were targeted and/or infected with NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware.
In 2022, the Citizen Lab gained extensive forensic visibility into new NSO Group exploit activity after finding infections among members of Mexico’s civil society, including two human rights defenders from Centro PRODH, which represents victims of military abuses in Mexico.
Mexican digital rights organization R3D, with technical support from the Citizen Lab, has determined that Mexican journalists and a human rights defender were infected with Pegasus between 2019 and 2021. The infections occurred years after the first revelations of Pegasus abuses in Mexico, and after Mexico’s current President assured the public that the government no longer used the spyware, and that there would be no further abuses.
Our investigation uncovered an extensive Pegasus hacking operation against pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand. At least 30 forensically-confirmed victims of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between October 2020 and November 2021.
The Citizen Lab, in collaboration with Catalan civil society groups, has identified at least 65 individuals targeted or infected with mercenary spyware, including members of the European Parliament, Catalan Presidents, legislators, jurists, and members of civil society organisations.
Phones belonging to four Jordanian human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists were hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between August 2019 and December 2021. We assess that at least two of the four targets were hacked by Pegasus operators primarily focused on Jordan, based on SMS messages containing Pegasus links that map to a cluster of domain names focusing on Jordanian themes.
