Espionage Against the European Parliament

https://citizenlab.ca/research/member-of-committee-investigating-spyware-hacked-with-pegasus/

by ledoge • 19 days ago

429 131 19 days ago

shevy-java• 19 days ago

Not quite surprising. The more important question is: how much are lobbyists paid to sell out data of EU citizens to US corporations here? Will they prevail?

There is enough money to go around for certain.

r3trohack3r3• 19 days ago

Pro tip: if you’re going to try a propoganda - don’t be so transparent on your redirect.

thin_carapace2• 19 days ago

if you believe that the parent comment is propaganda, would you care to share why exactly you believe that the average european citizen benefits from mass surveillance funnelled through american channels?

jongjong3• 19 days ago

It feels like they've been paid to sell out the users themselves, not just the data. It's weird that EU is so dependant on US tech when it comes to media platforms... While there are alternatives out there. In a lot of related areas in tech, it feels like suppression.

dizlexic• 19 days ago

This might be taken as hyperbolic, but the EU seems to have trouble building anything.

leonidasrup2• 19 days ago

"PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies.

The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012 "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

petcat• 19 days ago

In May 2026, Kouloglou contacted the Citizen Lab and we conducted a forensic analysis of artifacts from his iPhone. We found with high confidence that his device was successfully infected with Pegasus spyware on or around October 21, 2022, and again on March 6 and 7, 2023.

VWWHFSfQ• 19 days ago

> Further validating our finding of targeting, our forensic analysis shows Kouloglou received multiple Apple threat notifications about targeting with mercenary spyware on three occasions: March 2, 2023, August 29, 2023, and April 10, 2024. It is important to note that threat notifications from Apple and other companies are not real-time alerts. They are typically sent to users in batches, often months or more after targeting takes place.
> Kouloglou reports to us that he did not recall receiving the Apple notifications we observed.

Am I understanding this correctly that Apple sent him notifications that he was being monitored and he ignored them?

pmontra• 19 days ago

"he did not recall receiving the Apple notifications" so he didn't notice them.

EA-31673• 19 days ago

That seems to be the case, although he claims to have somehow missed them. Overall this is one of those stories that's obviously an outrage, except for the fact that every country on Earth spies on the rest, and quite a few private entities do as well. Still the way the game is played if you get caught you have to act ashamed, and the people catching you get to gloat.

It's silly, but it's a show the public never tires of.

saintfire• 19 days ago

I mean his device was pwnd completely. Its not a stretch that attempts to warn are suppressed.

That or he didn't notice or could have assumed the notice itself was one of many phishing attempts against large orgs.

If I saw a notification that my account was compromised by Pegasus I'd personally assume phishing.

matheusmoreira6• 19 days ago

I wonder if we can forensically analyze our own phones to see if some nutjob with Pegasus has targeted us as well.

sanguinesphinx• 19 days ago

How many nutjobs with Pegasus are really running around out there?

mikeponders• 19 days ago

Looks like we can: https://docs.mvt.re/en/latest/

elorant• 19 days ago

Around that time a lot of politicians in Greece had their phones hacked by Pegasus. It's an ongoing scandal in Greece that never got fully resolved, although all evidence indicate that it was an operation orchestrated by the office of the prime minister in coordination with the local intelligence service. So I wouldn't call that an attack against the European parliament.

Krasnol• 19 days ago

Same story in Poland:

https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/02/26/poland-charges-former...

Everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer.

freehorse2• 19 days ago

small correction, that is predator/intellexa, not pegasus/nso. So this is different

tsoukase• 18 days ago

No, it was the Predator rootkit that presumably was introduced directly from the PM to infect many politicians, even of his own party. This lead to the uncovering of the long-standing agricultural scandal of OPEKEPE gov org and is going to lead to the largest constitutional change in modern Greek history, after and only if he wins the elections next spring: among others lifting of minister immunity and reduction of the number of parliament members. Through the revelation of corrupt politicians' acts based on their phone data leakage, the public opinion turns against them and accepts the changes easier.

bawolff3• 19 days ago

One interesting thing here, is they imply that both confidential personal medical information and confidential gov docs might have been compromised via the same phone.

Does EU parliment not have a policy of seperating work and personal devices?

dewey• 19 days ago

Having a policy and what happens in the real world are most of the time very different things (Understandably, as the line between work and personal time is often blurry).

bawolff3• 19 days ago

True but one would hope though that people dealing with national security would follow more than your average employee.

drdexebtjl• 19 days ago

From what I understood, he took his compromised work phone to the hospital, and the concern is that it may have recorded conversations that contained personal medical information.

He didn’t have medical information on the phone.

rich_sasha• 18 days ago

If you're off sick and need to provide a doctor's letter, at some point it will need to touch your employer servers. Just one example.

0x_rs• 19 days ago

Just for context, some european contries have been abusing spyware such as Pegasus so much Israeli firms have cut ties with them, one such example below with Italy. Others have pointed out Greece and Poland. It's quite laughable that a member of the EU parliament would be subject to the same kind of spying activities innocent journalists, activists and possibly normal people are, all of that by the member states of the union, directly contributing to the Israeli companies developing and spreading malware.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgmzdjw24yo

notrealyme123• 19 days ago

Cutting ties after there has been an outcry is damage controll. I would assume that the product is still available under another sub vendor to the same people.

omnimus• 19 days ago

Of course it's damage control. The post just tries to paint the europeans as incompetent to hold the power. The company making spyware is somehow wise, righteous and saintly.

jojobas• 19 days ago

Euro Parliament/Euro Commission are comically open to espionage. French/Belgian counterintelligence are not allowed to do much, and there is little in terms of EU counterintelligence.

freehorse2• 19 days ago

we note an overlap between the first infection and a previously identified Pegasus campaign targeting Russian and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe, suggesting a Pegasus customer with authorization to spy in multiple European countries is responsible.

Who has "authorization to spy in multiple European countries"?

In this older article [0] about one of the mentioned russian exiles case it is mentioned that estonia and netherlands have used pegasus outside their borders, but there could be also others with such license

the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and an unnamed Estonian government agency, appear to use Pegasus extensively outside their borders, including within multiple European countries

However if the link between the russian exiles cases and kouloglou checks (through use of same mode of attack), a country like estonia sounds more likely. However, it can always be that an agency with access to pegasus uses it collaborating with/on behalf of an agency without.

[0] https://www.accessnow.org/publication/hacking-meduza-pegasus...

goobatrooba2• 18 days ago

It's authorisation by the Israeli company providing Pegasus. So anyone who either pays enough or is serving Israeli interests.

Hizonner3• 19 days ago

How is it that any NSO employee is still able to travel outside Israel without getting arrested? Seems like they're involved in criminal conspiracies in like half the countries in the world.

r_lee3• 19 days ago

same for CIA/NSA employees/contractors right?

punk_ihaq• 19 days ago

CIA/NSA personnel use cover identities when working abroad and conceal their association with CIA/NSA: https://theintercept.com/snowden-sidtoday/3676073-cover-anon...

greatgib• 19 days ago

There will be no real consequence, as always, just more paperwork, so how to expect that anything will change?

throw1234567891• 19 days ago

They’ll quickly make up some law forcing someone to do something, or throw some hefty fine at someone, and it’ll be sorted pronto. Someone’s gotta be held responsible.

CalRobert3• 19 days ago

Would lockdown mode on iOS stop this?

inigyou2• 19 days ago

Probably, that's the point of it, however your smartphone becomes a very dumbphone in lockdown mode, intentionally to reduce attack surface. It's only really practical if you just need a dumb phone system endpoint to send and receive SMS and PSTN calls and check the time.

r3trohack3r3• 18 days ago

I keep my phone in lockdown mode and haven’t noticed too many problems day-to-day.

A few minor inconveniences (webGL doesn’t work, the magic automatic code from SMS keyboard integration is gone, etc.) but overall the phone is still a smart phone.

CalRobert3• 18 days ago

Mine has been on lockdown mode for months and all I’ve noticed is some images not loading on sites.

codedokode3• 19 days ago

Isn't it the problem with software architecture choices like large monolitic kernels, lots of unnecessary telemetry/marketing services, legacy APIs, unsafe languages like C, lack of static analysis, etc?

You should threat a phone as an infected ground and do not keep anything important there.

Some leaders simply do not use smartphones and are protected from electronic spyware.

spixy• 19 days ago

Which is difficult since smartphones are used as 2FA, and not every service has web interface, only mobile one (some banks, chats, dating, uber, etc..)

DANmode10• 18 days ago

m.uber.com

Never had a bank without a usable web app. You should consider the same!

Stop shooting the web in the foot.

permalac• 19 days ago

The catalan MEPs also were targeted with Pegasus, and I don't remember the details but at that time the only client were nation states, so Spain was the one to hire the service. Nothing happened.

aussieguy1234• 19 days ago

Of course, NSO group had nothing to do with it /s

zx8080• 19 days ago

It is important to note that threat notifications from Apple and other companies are not real-time alerts. They are typically sent to users in batches, often months or more after targeting takes place.

Wow, so Apple is able to detect threat, but does not remove or prevent it, and waits silently for months before notifying a user?

If this is not a security theatre I don't know what is.

hulitu• 19 days ago

I don't know what is.

PRISM.

vivzkestrel• 18 days ago

- extremely stupid question: can they hack you with pegasus spyware if you use a nokia 1100?

- if yes -> extremely stupid suggestion: why cant people in government positions use a nokia 1100 as work phone and some other phone as a personal phone?

Cider9986• 18 days ago

If you're using a nokia, there's no need for expensive mercenary spyware because your messages and calls aren't E2EE.

If they did want to use spyware, it would be significantly cheaper because that phone is (decades?) out of date misses (thousands?) security patches.

juliusceasar• 18 days ago

This couldn't have happened without the knowlege of Israeli government.

"The sale of Pegasus licenses to foreign governments must be approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense."

Espionage Against the European Parliament

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