Status: 05/02/2022 12:41 p.m
Spain’s Prime Minister Sánchez and Defense Minister Robles have been the victims of a hacker attack. According to the government, their cell phones were tapped with the Pegasus spy software. The government did not provide information on the origin.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles Fernández have become the target of a spy attack, according to the government there.
According to the government in Madrid, the mobile phones of Sánchez and Robles were tapped “illegally” and “from outside” with the help of the Israeli spy software Pegasus. It is not an assumption, but “extremely serious facts,” said Cabinet Minister Félix Bolaños at a press conference.
According to him, Sánchez’s cell phone was accessed twice in May 2021 and another access to the defense minister’s device in June 2021. In both cases, “an undetermined volume of data was downloaded from both cell phones”.
No information on the origin of the espionage
There is no evidence that there were any further accesses at a later date. Bolaños did not say whether the Spanish authorities have any clues as to the origin of the wiretapping or whether it came from abroad.
But it is absolutely certain that it is an attack from outside, because in Spain all interventions are carried out by official bodies and with legal approval,” added the minister. “In this case, neither of the two circumstances existed,” he said Bolaños: That’s why there is “not the slightest doubt that this is an external intervention.”
Allegations against Spanish secret service
Allegations of espionage against the Spanish secret service CNI are already straining the relationship between the Sánchez government and supporters of Catalan independence. On April 18, the Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab published a report that the mobile phones of more than 60 pro-independence supporters were spied on with Pegasus between 2017 and 2020. The Catalans blame the CNI for this.
The Pegasus software from the Israeli manufacturer NSO is able to read out all data from mobile phones attacked with it. In addition, Pegasus can switch on the camera and microphone of the respective device unnoticed. According to the non-governmental organization Amnesty International, up to 50,000 cell phones worldwide could have been spied on with the help of the software.