Israeli Company’s Spyware Is Used to Target U.S. Embassy Employees in Africa
The New York Times
The hack is the first known case of the spyware, known as Pegasus, being used against American officials.
WASHINGTON — The iPhones of 11 U.S. Embassy employees working in Uganda were hacked using spyware developed by Israel’s NSO Group, the surveillance firm that the United States blacklisted a month ago because it said the technology had been used by foreign governments to repress dissent, several people familiar with the breach said on Friday.
The hack is the first known case of the spyware, known as Pegasus, being used against American officials. Pegasus is a sophisticated surveillance system that can be remotely implanted in smartphones to extract sound and video recordings, encrypted communications, photos, contacts, location data and text messages.
There is no suggestion that NSO itself hacked into the phones, but rather that one of its clients, mostly foreign governments, had directed it against embassy employees.
