Security researchers have confirmed that a European politician had his phone hacked with the Pegasus spyware while serving on an investigatory committee probing abuses of the notorious surveillance tool. This has reignited fresh controversy over governments abusing spyware to collect information about their critics.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s digital rights unit The Citizen Lab say the confirmed phone hacking of Greek journalist and former politician Stelios Kouloglou during 2022 and 2023 marks the first time that a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, tasked with investigating phone spyware attacks by European governments, has been publicly identified as a victim of spyware.
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Android ‘ActionSpy’ Malware Targets Turkic Minority Group
June 12, 2020
Researchers have discovered a new Android spyware, dubbed ActionSpy, targeting victims across Tibet, Turkey and Taiwan. The spyware is distributed either via watering-hole websites or fake websites. Researchers believe ActionSpy is being used in ongoing campaigns to target Uyghur victims. The Uyghurs, a Turkic minority ethnic group affiliated with Central and East Asia, have previously been targeted in spyware attacks. Though ...
- NSO Group Impersonates Facebook Security Team to Spread Spyware — Report
May 22, 2020
According to an investigative journalist team, the Israeli authors of the infamous Pegasus mobile spyware, NSO Group, have been using a spoofed Facebook login page, crafted to look like an internal Facebook security team portal, to lure victims in. The news comes as Facebook alleges that NSO Group has been using U.S.-based infrastructure to launch espionage ...
- This powerful Android malware stayed hidden for years, infecting tens of thousands of smartphones
May 14, 2020
A carefully managed hacking and espionage campaign is infecting smartphones with a potent form of Android malware, providing those behind it with total control of the device, while also remaining completely hidden from the user. Mandrake spyware abuses legitimate Android functions to help gain access to everything on the compromised device in attacks that can gather ...
- Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM
May 1, 2020
A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the sample propagated through the employee pool via the infected company’s mobile device management ...
- Oil and Gas Firms Targeted With Agent Tesla Spyware
April 21, 2020
Attackers are targeting energy companies with the Agent Tesla spyware, as seen in recent spearphishing emails with malicious attachments. Researchers say that until now, Agent Tesla has not been associated with campaigns targeting the oil-and-gas vertical. The emails leverage the tumultuous nature of today’s oil and gas markets, which have been under tremendous stress in recent weeks, as ...
- Australian Health Insurance-Themed Spam Spreads Ursnif
April 21, 2020
Trend Micro researchers encountered a spam campaign referencing the Australian health insurance brand Medicare. The attachment, which Trend Micro detects as Trojan.X97M.URSNIF.THDAEBO, downloads the malicious file (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.URSNIF.THDAEBO). The campaign aims to spread the spyware Ursnif, also known as Gozi. The email headers pertain to payment transactions with the words “Statement,” “Invoice,” or “Transaction,” and include a ...
