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This year marks a record for the discovery of so-called zero days, secret software flaws like the one that NSO used to install its spyware. Shalev Hulio, a co-founder of NSO Group, vehemently denied the list’s accuracy, telling The Times, “This is like opening up the white pages, choosing 50,000 numbers and drawing some conclusion from it.”

It also included 14 heads of state, including President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly of Egypt, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, Saad-Eddine El Othmani, who until recently was the prime minister of Morocco, and Charles Michel, the head of the European Council. The consortium did not disclose how it had obtained the list, and it was unclear whether the list was aspirational or whether the people had actually been targeted with NSO spyware.Īmong those listed were Azam Ahmed, who had been the Mexico City bureau chief for The Times and who has reported widely on corruption, violence and surveillance in Latin America, including on NSO itself and Ben Hubbard, The Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, Lebanon, who has investigated rights abuses and corruption in Saudi Arabia and wrote a recent biography of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

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Starting in 2016, a series of New York Times investigations revealed the presence of NSO’s spyware on the iPhones of Emirati activists lobbying for expanded voting rights Mexican nutritionists lobbying for a national soda tax lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 Mexican students academics who helped write anti-corruption legislation journalists in Mexico and England and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by Mexico’s police. The company has said that it sells its spyware only to governments that meet strict human rights standards and that it expressly requires customers to agree to use its spyware only to track terrorists or criminals.īut over the past six years, NSO’s Pegasus spyware has turned up on the phones of activists, dissidents, lawyers, doctors, nutritionists and even children in countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. NSO did not immediately respond to inquiries on Monday. Krstić said.Īpple has said it plans to introduce new security defenses for iMessage, Apple’s texting application, in its next iOS 15 software update, expected later this year. “Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life and are used to target specific individuals,” Mr.