Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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IN MAY 2016, the Mexican investigative journalist SebastiĆ”n BarragĆ”n was working on an explosive story. An anonymous source had sent Aristegui Noticias, the investigative outlet where he worked, a grainy video that appeared to show a scene of brutal torture; in it a group of police officers surround a man handcuffed to a chair; they strike him over and over again, and pull a plastic bag over his head. One of the men in the video is wearing a jacket with the letters PGJEM, The Prosecutor General for the State of Mexico, a state that surrounds Mexico City like a horseshoe. Barragan called the PGJEM and the Mexican Attorney Generalās (PGR) office for comment. A few hours later, BarragĆ”n was sent an odd text message that read, āI have credible evidence against public servantsā; underneath, there was a link. Researchers at the Canada-based digital rights group Citizen Lab would later analyze that link and discover it was engineered to infect Barraganās phone with Pegasus, an advanced exploit that can hijack the microphones and cameras on any smartphone, and slurp up contacts and correspondence. In BarragĆ”nās mind it was clear what had just happened: āThe Mexican government wanted to hack meā BarragĆ”n told me recently.
His suspicions were all but confirmed a year later when leaked government documents revealed a $32 million contract between the Mexican Attorney Generalās office and a local intermediary for the NSO Group, the Israeli company that sells Pegasus to law enforcement agencies.
The attack against BarragĆ”n isnāt an isolated incident. Earlier this month, Citizen Lab published a report that found traces of Pegasus in over 45 countries, including a number of places where the government is known to aggressively prosecute reporters, such as Turkey and Kazakhstan. The threat this poses to journalists canāt be overstated: A Pegasus operator can quietly transform a cellphone into a surveillance hub, tracking the reporters movements, identify sources, even potentially impersonate that journalist in the digital world. Given the global nature of the threat, this past week, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a security advisory, its first ever on Pegasus, to alert journalists everywhere that they could be targeted a manner similar to BarragĆ”n.
Spyware hijacks smartphones, threatens journalists around the world
And they will be.
His suspicions were all but confirmed a year later when leaked government documents revealed a $32 million contract between the Mexican Attorney Generalās office and a local intermediary for the NSO Group, the Israeli company that sells Pegasus to law enforcement agencies.
The attack against BarragĆ”n isnāt an isolated incident. Earlier this month, Citizen Lab published a report that found traces of Pegasus in over 45 countries, including a number of places where the government is known to aggressively prosecute reporters, such as Turkey and Kazakhstan. The threat this poses to journalists canāt be overstated: A Pegasus operator can quietly transform a cellphone into a surveillance hub, tracking the reporters movements, identify sources, even potentially impersonate that journalist in the digital world. Given the global nature of the threat, this past week, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a security advisory, its first ever on Pegasus, to alert journalists everywhere that they could be targeted a manner similar to BarragĆ”n.
Spyware hijacks smartphones, threatens journalists around the world
And they will be.
