Revelation of world espionage: when technovigilance is applied between friends | New data on the Pegasus scandal, the Israeli software used to wiretap phones

From Paris

Life with allies is more difficult than with enemies. Europe and the United States have for years accused Russia and China of mounting destabilization operations on social media and spying on everyone in the Western world. However, for the second time in the 21st century, journalistic investigations have uncovered the existence of a mutant agenda that has nothing to do with “adversaries” but with allies. It is Pegasus, software made by an Israeli company (NSO Group) and used by friendly states and security organizations to spy on political leaders, human rights activists, dissidents, journalists and businessmen. In 2013, Omri Lavie, one of the three founders, described the Nasos group as “an absolute ghost”. Among the many victims of Pegasus is French President Emmanuel Macron, that the intelligence services of a “friendly” country like Morocco and a client of the Nasos company which manufactures Pegasus tried to spy infiltrate your phone in March 2019.

The list of 50,000 numbers chosen by Naso customers also includes the names of former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and 14 other members of the government. The global list includes 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists, 180 journalists from 21 countries, with a haunting presence of Mexican journalists (12), and 65 business leaders from various countries. In total, with regard to the political sphere, the telephone infiltration includes 13 heads of state or government in the exercise of their functions or already in: Emmanuel Macron in France, Barham Salih in Iraq and Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa (acting): the current Prime Ministers of Pakistan, Imran Khan, Saad-Eddine El-Othmani in Morocco, Moustafa Kemal Madbouli in Egypt and the King of Morocco Mohammed VI.

El espionaje apuntó también a los ex primeros ministros de Yemen, Ahmed Ben Dagher, del Líbano, Saad Hariri, de Uganda, Ruhakana Rugunda, de Francia, Edouard Philippe, de Bélgica, Charles Michel, de Argelia, Noureddine Bedoui, y Moustafa Kemal Madbouli in Egypt. In Mexico, the administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto took an interest, between 2016 and 2017, in the current head of state, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, his wife, children and doctors. Peña Nieto’s government hired NSO Group to spy on a total of 15,000 people in Mexico (diplomats, politicians from all sectors, activists and union leaders).

The source of the information is Forbidden Stories (a network based in France) and Amnesty International’s Security Lab, which forwarded the information to a consortium of 17 media from 17 countries, including the French evening The world. As Forbidden Stories explains, “Spyware can be installed on any smartphone without its owner having to intervene. Once installed, Pegasus allows the customer to take full control of the phone. “The term” any Smartphone “means exactly everything, meaning even the deceptively tamper-proof iPhone. The Cupertino company runs these days to hide security flaws in his iOS operating system that left his phone vulnerable and users exposed.

Blame it on iPhones

The first defect has been discovered andn 2016, Iafter what Ahmed Mansoor, one of the United Arab Emirates’ human rights activists, to contact Citizen Lab to report attack on his iPhone. Citizen Lab investigated the phone and discovered that Pegasus was acting like the device was his own home. The issue was updated in 2021. Forbidden Stories reports that “Amnesty International’s Security Lab, in association with Forbidden Stories, was able to perform forensic analyzes on the phones of more than a dozen of these journalists. , and 67 phones in total (37 infected). This revealed successful infiltrations through a security hole in iPhones as recently as this month. Ah the manzanita is not free from worms! For the reader’s pleasure, The biggest security flaw detected in Apple phone concerns iMessage, the messaging system between Apple devices. The Naso Group’s client agencies have shown a predilection for journalists, especially Mexican and Indian. It should be remembered, and this is underlined by Forbidden Stories, that “the journalists who appear on the lists have been legally threatened, others defamed and some have had to flee their countries victims of persecution”. Phones belonging to relatives of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi beheaded at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (208) by a commando group specially from Saudi Arabia were also pinned to Pegasus. Technology thus appears, once again, as an effective instrument not only for manipulating public opinion through social networks but also as an essential piece that intelligence services and law enforcement agencies use to intimidate, spy on, defame and repress journalists and dissidents. For Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, “it is a question of controlling public discourse, of opposing any supervision, of suppressing any dissenting voice”.

Morocco

Although this is worldwide espionage, Morocco appears (for now) as the fiercest state in spying on French political leaders, journalists and dissidents. Of the 50,000 numbers detected between 2017 and 2019, 10,000 concern Morocco. Out of these 10,000 dozen, they appoint French political leaders, all members of Emmanuel Macron’s governments: Christophe Castaner, Minister of the Interior, Nicole Belloubet (Justice), Jean-Yves Le Drian (Foreign Relations), Bruno Le Maire (Economy), Jean-Michel Blanquer (Education), Didier Guillaume (Agriculture), Gérald Darmanin (Budget), Jacqueline Gourault (Territorial Cohesion), Marc Fesneau (Relations with Parliament), Annick Girardin (Overseas), Franck Riester (Culture) Julien Denormandie (Housing), (Sébastien Lecornu (Territorial Collectivities), François de Rugy (Ecological Transition). Rabat, which is a “privileged” partner of France in the Maghreb, has tried to poke around on all scales of power It is not known whether he actually managed to get in on the phone, or whether the King of Morocco (himself on the list) was aware of this operation or whether it was an initiative of the black pearl of the regime, Abdelatif Hamuchi, chief of the police and the services Secrets.

Pegasus

Pegasus, itself, is not illegal. The program is licensed for export, and furthermore, the use of spyware is legal as long as it deals with issues related to terrorism or organized crime (Wassenaar agreement). This is what the NSO Group says: “it only collects data from mobile devices from people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities and serious criminals”. Far from there. In 2020, Citizen Lab (cybersecurity group belonging to the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, Canada), discovered that Roger Torrent, former Speaker of the Catalan Parliament (2018-2021, ERC party), had been spied on by Pegasus via a WhatsApp bug between April and May 2019. In 2012, the Israeli newspaper Calcalist has published an investigation into a number of NSO Group contracts, including a $ 12 million one with Mexico. In 2015, WikiLeaks published (Hackin Team, WikiLeaks – WikiLeaks / Citizen Lab) the enriching exchange between a member of the Hacking Team (Italian IT security company) and a Mexican intermediary. The employee of the Hacking Team asks you for the amount and the technical proposal of NSO Group to counter-propose a better one. (https: // wikileaks. org / hackingteam / emails / emailid / 5391).

The Brazilian portal UOL in turn revealed that Carlos Bolsonaro, son of President Jair Bolsonaro, intervened in March 2021 in the call for tenders of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security to acquire, for 24 million reais, the Pegasus spy program. The information collected by Forbidden Stories has not been fully published. Of the 50,000 telephone numbers, 1,000 covering only 10 countries have been analyzed with certainty. There are 49,000 secrets to reveal and many countries to explore. Pegasus (Pegasus) is one of the most famous fantastic figures in Greek mythology. From now on, it will be one of the darkest in techno surveillance.