Rabat – Israeli cyber warfare company NSO has been revealed to have contracts in 12 EU countries, with 22 different clients, according to Israel’s Haaretz.
The information was reportedly revealed during a visit to Israel by members of the European Parliament Committee of Inquiry on Pegasus Spyware, where they met with NSO officials, and experts in the field.
The discovery contrasts previous reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch and Forbidden Stories, whose reporting focused primarily on the software’s usage by non-Western countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
The implicated countries included Saudi Arabia, the UAE, India, and Morocco among others.
Morocco has consistently denied the allegations, and has filed defamation lawsuits in multiple European countries over the affair.
European NSO customers
The visiting delegation demanded to know the names of NSO’s European customers, revealing that out of 14 countries that had signed contracts with the company in the past, 12 are still using the Pegasus program.
NSO revealed that its contracts were signed with 22 security agencies, intelligence departments, and law enforcement agencies, rather than signing with the states themselves.
Further details about which clients the company was dealing with, or which states it was still operating in, were not provided, although Haaretz reported that the company stopped working with Poland and Hungary, and was still operating in Spain.
Earlier this year, the EU said it found evidence that some of its senior officials were targeted by the spyware. The perpetrator of the espionage could be an EU member state, European lawmaker Sophie in ‘t Veld said.
Pegasus
The software is highly sophisticated, allowing advanced attacks such as “zero-click” exploits, which allow an attacker to gain access to the victim’s device without the need for them to click a link or download anything.
It can give the perpetrator access to listen in on conversations, read encrypted messages, access contacts, and even turn on the camera and microphone.
At the same time as these revelations, a larger cyber warfare industry was coming into light in Europe. Greece was one example as the country operated a program similar to Pegasus against an investigative journalist, as well as the head of the socialist party.
Pegasus and Morocco
Last summer, when Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories published their report, Morocco was implicated as one of the countries using the Israeli software to spy on high ranking officials and dissidents.
The Pegasus project posited that Morocco used the spyware to spy on French President Emmanuel Macron, with no evidence, pushing the kingdom to publicly demand that Amnesty show evidence for the allegations.
Since then, Morocco has continued to deny the claims. In the summer of 2021, the North African country filed a lawsuit in France against Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories for defamation, which is still being fought.
