French prosecutor opens investigation into allegations of Pegasus spyware | Cybercrime News

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The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into allegations that Moroccan intelligence services spied on several French journalists using Pegasus software at the heart of a global scandal.

The investigation announced on Tuesday will examine 10 different charges, including whether there has been invasion of privacy, fraudulent access to personal electronic devices and criminal conspiracy.

It was launched after an investigation published Sunday by 17 media organizations, led by the Paris-based nonprofit journalism group Forbidden Stories, said that the Pegasus spyware manufactured and licensed by the Israeli company NSO had been used in successful hacking attempts. of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists.

The French investigative news site Mediapart filed a legal complaint on Monday following allegations of espionage.

The organization said in a series of tweets that the Moroccan secret service had used Pegasus to infiltrate the cell phones of its founder Edwy Plenel and one of its journalists.

The only way to get to the bottom of this is for the judicial authorities to conduct an independent investigation into the widespread espionage organized in France by Morocco, Mediapart said in one of its tweets.

Morocco denies espionage allegations

Morocco issued an official statement rejecting what it called unfounded and false allegations.

The country’s government said it had never acquired computer software to infiltrate communications devices.

But other journalists working for French media companies have also reportedly been targeted by Moroccan security services, including employees of the national newspaper Le Monde and the AFP news agency.

The press release from the Paris prosecutor’s office does not directly mention Morocco but specifies that it has decided to open the investigation after receiving the complaint from Mediapart.

The Guardian, one of the media involved in the investigation, said it suggested widespread and continued abuse of NSO hacking software.

NSO said its product was only intended for use by government-controlled intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism and other serious crimes.

He issued a statement denying the report of Forbidden Stories and its partners.

European politicians and media groups have expressed outrage at the news.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said espionage, if confirmed, was completely unacceptable, while French government spokesman Gabriel Attal called it extremely shocking .

Target band

Pegasus is a form of malware that infects smartphones to allow extraction of messages, photos, and emails, record calls, and covertly activate microphones.

The new investigation into its use, led by Forbidden Stories in collaboration with Amnesty International, was based on data leaks of unspecified origin.

The two men said the data they obtained pointed to a range of potential targets for surveillance by authoritarian governments who are among NSO clients.

Journalists from the media consortium approached by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International with access to data combed through a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers, identifying more than 1,000 people in 50 countries.

They include 189 journalists, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state. Among them were journalists and politicians in France.

Amnesty was able to examine the smartphones of 67 people on the list and found attempts or successes of Pegasus infections in 37.

He revealed that the phone of the fiancee of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggis, Hatice Cengiz, was infected just four days after her assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Amnesty also found Pegasus on the phones of the co-founders of independent Indian online outlet The Wire and repeated infections on the phones of two Hungarian investigative journalists from the Direkt outlet36.

The list of potential targets included Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the Financial Times.

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