Spain revealed on Monday that the mobile phones of the country's prime minister and defense minister were the targets of "Pegasus" spyware that was able to steal a significant amount of data.
Authorities said that the attack was conducted last year and breached Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's mobile phone twice in May 2021 and Defense Minister Margarita Robles once the following month. On Monday, Presidency Minister Felix Bolanos was the one that made the announcement in a hastily convened news conference.
Pegasus Spyware Attack
Bolanos said that the reports detailing the hackings have already been transferred to Spain's National Court for further investigation. In a statement, the official said that the attack was no doubt an illicit, unauthorized intervention. He said it came from outside state organisms and it did not have judicial authorization.
The country's Socialist-led government has been under pressure to explain why the cellphones of dozens of people connected to the separatist movement in the Catalonia region were infected with the Pegasus spyware between 2017 and 200. The revelations involved at least 65 people, including elected officials, lawyers, and activists, as per NBC News.
The presidency minister did not say whether or not Spanish authorities had any indication of where the attacks originated from or if another nation was behind them. While Bolanos said that data was stolen during the attacks, there was no evidence that other tapping incidents took place after the known dates.
Pegasus spyware is used to silently infiltrate mobile phones in order to extract data or activate a camera or microphone to spy on their owners. The NSO Group, which is based in Israel, owns Pegasus and said that the software is only sold to government agencies that target criminals and terrorists.
According to Aljazeera, the NSO Group has been criticized by global rights groups for allegedly violating users' privacy around the world. It now faces various lawsuits from major tech firms, including Apple and Microsoft.
Spain's Struggles
The spyware attacks came at a time when more than 8,000 migrants forced their way into Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta. They traveled from Morocco and scaled a border fence or swam around it to get into the country. In response, authorities deployed troops and armored vehicles to stop more migrants from getting into its territory.
It also came as Rabat and Madrid were at odds due to Spain agreeing to provide coronavirus care to a prominent Sahrawi leader who was fighting for the independence of Western Sahara. The territory was once under Spanish control that Morocco annexed in the 1970s.
However, Moroccan authorities have denied accusations that they encouraged mass migration into Ceuta. The remarks come as Spain struggled to cope with tens of thousands of migrants from Africa.
The dispute in the Catalonia region involves separatists wanting to break away from Spain and activists staging occasionally violent street protests. The chaos has haunted Spanish governments for decades.
The Pegasus attacks were discovered by Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity group of experts affiliated with the University of Toronto, This resulted in the regional Catalan accusing Spain's National Intelligence Center (CNI) of spying on separatists, France24 reported.
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