The Spanish government announced on Monday that the mobile phones of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles were the target of “illegal” and “external” wiretaps using Israeli software Pegasus.
“These are not conjectures,” said Presidential minister Félix Bolaños at an urgently convened press conference, referring to the “enormous gravitational realities” that occurred in 2021.
“We are absolutely certain that there will be an attack from the outside (…) because in a democracy like ours in Spain all intervention is done through official institutions and with jurisdiction,” said Bolaños.
“In this case, neither of the two cases happened,” he added. “So we are sure, we have no doubt that this is an infection, it is outside interference,” said the minister.
However, Bolaños did not specify whether Spanish officials had any clues as to who might be behind the interference, or whether they were considering a foreign country.
“When we say there is foreign interference, we mean that it is foreign to state bodies and has no jurisdiction,” the minister said.
Bolaños noted that a “two intrusions” were detected on Sánchez’s cell phone in May 2021 and on Robles’ device in June 2021.
In both cases, the interventions made it possible to remove “a certain amount of data from two mobile phones” without disclosing the amount.
When asked about the duration of the attacks, he replied, “There is no evidence of occupation after these dates.”
Created by Israeli company NSO, Pegasus allows access to messaging services and data as soon as it is installed on a mobile phone, as well as remote activation of the device to capture images or audio.
NSO has always stated that it only sells software to states and operations must obtain prior authorization from Israeli authorities.
Amnesty International claims that the software may have been used to hack up to 50,000 mobile phones worldwide.
The revelations came amid a political storm in Spain, where the central government of socialist Sánchez faced a moment of tension with independentists in Catalonia, who accused the National Intelligence Center (CNI) of espionage.
Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity project at the University of Toronto, exploded on April 18 when it published a report claiming that more than 60 people from the Catalan independence movement had infected mobile phones with the Israeli Pegasus virus. spyware
source: Noticias
