The mobile phone used by French President Emmanuel Macron was one of the targets of the Moroccan government’s Pegasus spying campaign.
Reported from Le Monde, Wednesday (21/7/2021), one of Macron’s most frequently used phone numbers since 2017 is on the list of phone numbers that could potentially be targets of cyber espionage by the Moroccan intelligence service.
The French government says if this is true, then this is a very serious threat. Therefore, they will conduct an investigation into these allegations.
The Moroccan government itself denies this allegation and admits not using Pegasus at all. This accusation they regard as baseless and very wrong.
In addition to Macron, there are also the names of former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and 14 ministers targeted in 2019.
The Pegasus action made by the NSO from Israel was revealed from an investigation conducted by a non -profit journalism group from Paris called Forbidden Stories.
They say spyware was used to conduct hacking attempts, some of which were successful, on mobile phones used by journalists, government officials and human rights activists in various countries.
Le Monde said they did not have Macron's phone number mentioned in the report, so they could not confirm the allegations. But they were able to confirm a number of other phone numbers, including the phone number of former environment minister Francois de Rugy, who confirmed that the phone was indeed the target of espionage by Pegasus.
Pegasus is a piece of malware, spyware to be exact, that has gained a lot of popularity over the last few years. Spyware created by NSOs can steal a variety of data from an infected phone, such as messages, photos, emails, phone records, and even activate a microphone.
The NSO itself rejects the results of this research and cites them as erroneous assumptions and unproven theories. According to them, Pegasus is only used by government intelligence agencies and law enforcement to fight terrorism and crime.
In a radio interview, NSO founder Shalev Hulio said the list containing Pegasus targets had nothing to do with the NSO. According to him, NSO only makes products to fight terrorism.
“The platform we created aims to prevent terrorist attacks and save human lives,” he said.
Hulio also said that since the NSO came into existence 11 years ago, they have cooperated with 45 countries and rejected cooperation from nearly 90 countries, without mentioning the names of those countries.
“I think, in the end, this charge will end up in court, and the law will be in our favor after registering the defamation lawsuit, because we have no other choice,” he concluded.
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CYBER LIFE
