Tech

The NSO Spyware Group Targeted Dozens of Reporters in El Salvador


Israeli Spyware developer NSO group has long claimed a legitimate denial of abusing its powerfully targeted surveillance tools. Yet despite its outcry – and increased scrutiny from tech companies and regulators alike – abuses continue. The latest revelation comes from El Salvador, where NSO’s Pegasus malware was found on 37 devices by 35 journalists and activists last November.

Those findings, together published via a consortium of digital rights organizations, shows that despite NSO Group’s insistence that their products be used to track crime and terrorism, governments continue to deploy them against innocent target – and NSO did little to rein in its customers.

23 of the infected devices belonged to journalists connected to Salvadoran news site El Faro. The other three compromised devices belong to people associated with the publication Gato Encerrado. Both have published reports critical of the El Salvador government and face retaliation, such as being banned from various government press conferences and El Faro said, being subjected to invasive financial scrutiny. and alleged tax evasion. President Salvador Nayib Bukele and his administration are clearly hostile to the media; In early 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights precautionary measures are granted for 34 El Faro journalists believed to be at risk of human rights violations as a result of their work.

Other confirmed targets of the Pegasus attack include devices connected to Salvadoran publications. La Prensa Grafica, Revista Digital Disruptiva, El Diario de Hoy, and El Diario El Mundo, plus of two independent reporters. The campaign also hit devices affiliated with local NGOs, including Cristosal, Fundación Democracia and Transparencia y Justicia. Notably, the researchers found that some of the devices were infected with Pegasus more than 40 times. El Faro speak On November 23, Apple warned 12 of its journalists about the possibility that their devices had been targeted with the Pegasus spyware. The El Salvador Journalists Association announced a day later that a total of 23 journalists from different newsrooms had received the same information. Others who have received notices targeting Apple’s Pegasus include congressman Jhonny Wright Sol and Héctor Silva, a local San Salvador councilor.

“It’s quite shocking considering the scale and persistence of the infections when a single infection occurs,” said Natalia Krapiva, technology legal counsel at Access Now, one of the organizations that investigated the campaign. people are targeted multiple times. “Technology gives access to everything you’re doing on your phone, and we’ve heard NSO say over and over again that they’re taking action to implement human rights policies. Governments are also not transparent about the purchase and use of this spyware. They have to be responsible. Monitoring civil societies with these tools should not be the norm. ”

NSO Group did not return WIRED’s request for comment on the findings. Pegasus, which NSO has developed for both Apple’s iOS mobile operating system and Google’s Android operating system, can be used to track the location of a victim’s device, obtaining data such as text messages and email, activate the microphone and camera, etc.

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