PA: Israel' NSO Group spyware used to hack foreign ministry workers’ phones

The Palestinian Authority foreign ministry on Wednesday said some of its employees’ phones were hacked by Pegasus, a controversial spyware application made by the Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group, Times of Israel reported.

An investigation by the rights groups Front Line Defenders, Citizen Lab and Amnesty International alleged on Monday that six Palestinians had their cellphones hacked by the software. Three of the Palestinians worked at organizations Israel recently declared to be terror groups, drawing an international outcry.

The Palestinian rights group Al-Haq had previously declared that some foreign ministry civil servants had also been hacked. But the PA ministry did not comment until now.

“We always expected that our telephones were infiltrated by the occupation authorities and that all we said and sent was listened to and monitored. But now, we have evidence and legal documents that acknowledge the existence of this Israeli intrusion,” the PA foreign ministry said in a statement.

NSO Group activities have sparked controversy in recent months. The company has been dogged by accusations that the Pegasus software was used by governments to track dissidents and human rights activists. NSO insists its product is meant only to assist countries in fighting crime and terrorism.

NSO Group and a second Israeli firm Candiru was blacklisted last week by the US Commerce Department for allegedly developing and supplying “spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics and embassy workers.”

According to a New York Times report Monday, Israel is lobbying the US to reverse that designation.

The alleged use of NSO Group’s technology by Morocco against French President Emmanuel Macron also sparked a minor diplomatic squabble between Tel Aviv and Paris, which they agreed to put behind them last week, following a meeting between Macron and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.