EU Found Evidence Employee Phones Compromised With Spyware (reuters.com) 12
The European Union found evidence that smartphones used by some of its staff were compromised by an Israeli company's spy software, the bloc's top justice official said in a letter seen by Reuters. From the report: In a July 25 letter sent to European lawmaker Sophie in 't Veld, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said iPhone maker Apple had told him in 2021 that his iPhone had possibly been hacked using Pegasus, a tool developed and sold to government clients by Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group. The warning from Apple triggered the inspection of Reynders' personal and professional devices as well as other phones used by European Commission employees, the letter said. Though the investigation did not find conclusive proof that Reynders' or EU staff phones were hacked, investigators discovered "indicators of compromise" â" a term used by security researchers to describe that evidence exists showing a hack occurred.
shock amazement (Score:5, Interesting)
The only real question is which of NSO's customers deployed it.
Re:shock amazement (Score:5, Informative)
The only real question is which of NSO's customers deployed it.
That's the hard part unfortunately. They claim (as of a year ago) to have at least 60 intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies in 40 countries [washingtonpost.com] amongst their clientele. It's pretty "messed up".
Re:shock amazement (Score:4, Interesting)
Good luck figuring that out. The only "shock amazement" I see here is the consistently disappointing response of law enforcement agencies. They seem to give up as soon as they find out it's NSO software.
Re:shock amazement (Score:4)
The only "shock amazement" I see here is the consistently disappointing response of law enforcement agencies. They seem to give up as soon as they find out it's NSO software.
I presume that's because every time they identify the perp, it's an allied government (or their own) and if they try to pursue it they are told to fuck off in the name of national security.
Fuck Israel (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:3)
That's literally why we are sending them money. T.E. Lawrence explained what would happen ahead of time, and we thought it sounded swell.
Spying is normal (Score:3)
Of course everybody hates spying when it's directed against them, but every nation state does it.
They're well within their rights, and it would be extremely foolish not to do it.
I would be hopping mad if my country decided to shut down its intelligence gathering.
Apple's nose in the cake? (Score:2)
How did Apple know that a specific phone may have been infected? Why do they know what they know in order to determine this?
Did they contact the owner just because he was a politician? In that case, how did they know? Or do they contact all device owners that they detect this for? That would be nice for the owners but kind of make the spyware unusable.