Chris Lange, FISM News
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A United Arab Emirates (UAE) agency used powerful Pegasus spyware to spy on the fiancée of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi prior to his assassination, according to reporting by The Washington Post. Citing findings from Citizen Lab, the Post says Hanan Elatr’s phone was seized during her 2018 arrest by UAE officials in Dubai. Agents allegedly downloaded NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware onto her phone as she underwent hours of interrogation. The phone was returned to Elatr days later.
“We found the smoking gun on her phone,” said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab who said he examined Elatr’s phone.
Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post, was a Saudi dissident and outspoken critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. On Oct. 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the building of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and was never seen again, leading to accusations that the crown prince had ordered his assassination. Bin Salman denied the claim while Saudi officials said the journalist was killed in a “rogue operation.” Turkish officials, however, said assassins murdered Khashoggi at the behest of the Saudi government.
U.S. intelligence officials investigating the journalist’s disappearance concluded that his murder was ordered by bin Salman and that Khashoggi’s remains were likely dismembered and disposed of in an unknown location.
According to a report in The Hill, NSO Group faces numerous allegations that its sophisticated Pegasus spyware has been sold to foreign governments who use the software to spy on “dissidents, journalists and others.” The software can be installed on smartphones without detection and used to steal sensitive data and record phone calls. The U.S. Department of Commerce recently added NSO Group to its entity list, essentially blacklisting the Israeli-based company.
An NSO Group spokesperson who spoke with The Hill Tuesday has denied that the company had any direct involvement in the alleged hacking of Elatr’s phone, stating, “The repeatedly false media reports, recycled again today, are false and technologically impossible. As NSO has previously stated, our technology had no role in the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi or any of his family members, including Hanan Elatr.”
NSO Group, whose Pegasus spyware has been sold to 60 government agencies in 40 countries, further stated that Israel’s Ministry of Defense must approve all sales of the software to foreign governments.
FISM previously reported that the phones of several U.S. State Department employees were targeted by hackers using Pegasus software. Meanwhile, multiple cyberattacks targeting major U.S. corporations and other government agencies have been reported this year, though it is not yet clear if Pegasus was used in perpetrating all of the attacks.
Apple issued an emergency update for many of its products in September upon learning that hackers exploited software vulnerabilities using NSO Group spyware. A major data leak was reported by The Guardian in July citing approximately 50,000 individuals who have been targeted by Pegasus since 2016.