Citizen Lab, a digital rights watchdog, informed British officials on Monday that electronic devices connected to government networks, including those in the prime minister’s office and the foreign ministry, seemed to be infected with Israeli-made surveillance software. According to a blog post released by Citizen Lab, the espionage software is known as Pegasus, a product of Israeli cyber arms dealer NSO Group.
‘We affirm that in 2020 and 2021, we noticed and warned the government of the United Kingdom of many potential Pegasus spyware infections within official UK networks,’ according to the blog post. The charges, are ‘false and could not be tied to NSO products for technological and contractual reasons.’ stated a British government official.
Citizen Lab believes the targeting of the prime minister’s office was carried out by NSO clients in the UAE, while the British foreign ministry hacking was carried out by other nations such as Cyprus, Jordan, and India. Cyprus’s government ‘categorically denies’ any participation in the affair, according to government spokesperson Marios Pelekanos.
‘However, to avoid any further speculation on a Cyprus link, we note that the Government of the Republic of Cyprus, which enjoys excellent relations with the British Government in all fields, has never been approached with any sort of inquiry on the subject at large by the relevant British authorities,’ he said in an emailed statement.
Requests for a response from the UAE, Jordan, and India were not immediately returned. Pegasus can be used to remotely break into iPhones, providing clients deep access into the memory of a targeted phone or turning them into recording devices. Citizen Lab discovered evidence of hacked UK devices by monitoring internet traffic and other digital signals to surveillance servers that operate Pegasus for multiple NSO clients.
‘We spotted infections emerging from certain UK networks using a number of network scanning methods we employ and alerted the relevant UK authorities of our concerns at the time for them to follow up. We had no access to any devices and no information on the particular victim,’ Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert said in a blog post.
Citizen Lab is well-known in the cybersecurity market as one of the premier research organizations on mercenary malware. According to a New Yorker piece on NSO Group published on Monday, the hacking activity linked to the British prime minister’s office was probed by the UK National Cyber Security Centre, where specialists tested various phones for malware, but the findings were inconclusive.
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