Communication security

Israeli spyware found on phones in 45 countries, U.S. included

Cellphone spyware sold by an Israeli security firm is suspected of being used against targets in dozens of countries including the United States, researchers warned Tuesday, raising concerns and questions about topics ranging from eavesdropping to export control.

Known as “Pegasus,” researchers from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab linked the malware to infections in 45 countries, including the U.S., Canada and the U.K., in addition to dozens of other nations, democratic and otherwise, they wrote in a report.

Sold by NSO Group of Herzliya, Israel, Pegasus is capable of exfiltrating private data from infected cellphones, including passwords, text messages and live voice calls, and has previously been deployed against targets including Mexican journalists and a prominent United Arab Emirates human rights activist, among others.

Citizen Lab researchers scoured the internet for servers associated with Pegasus spyware during a two-year period ending August 2018, in turn discovering 1,091 IP addresses and 1,014 domain names, their report said. They subsequently used specialized software to group some of the data into 36 distinct Pegasus systems, each one apparently run by a separate “operator,” then further determined which countries each one was targeting.