ALBAWABA — A former European Parliament member who helped probe the illegal use of spyware across the European Union was himself targeted with the Israeli-made Pegasus spying tool, according to a new investigation by Canadian cybersecurity group Citizen Lab.
The phone of former Greek MEP Stelios Kouloglou was hacked at least three times between October 2022 and March 2023 with the Pegasus malware, produced by Israeli cyber espionage firm NSO Group, the investigation concluded.
Kouloglou was a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA Committee, which was created to study the use of spyware throughout the EU, including Pegasus and other comparable surveillance technology, at the time of the alleged assaults.
“The revelations are shocking. I never thought that a member of the committee investigating the abuses of spyware would become a target himself,” Kouloglou said. The episode, he argued, showed the audacity of those behind the operation.
The European Parliament did not explicitly comment on the case but said it continues to monitor cyber risks targeting its systems and has made spyware detection tools available to lawmakers since 2022. It further stated that a recent report had advocated extending those protections to all devices used for parliamentary business.
The NSO Group has frequently said that Pegasus is only sold to government agencies to use against terrorism and severe crime. But the corporation has been under fire for years over suspicions its software has been used to spy on journalists, opposition politicians, human rights campaigners and other people around the world.
Apple software probably has a previously undiscovered vulnerability exploited in the attacks, Citizen Lab stated. Apple later emailed Kouloglou repeated notifications that he had been targeted in state-sponsored spyware attacks, the paper said, however researchers said they could not identify the government responsible for deploying Pegasus against him.
