Dozens of journalists at Al Jazeera Media Network were targeted this year by advanced spyware sold by an Israeli firm in an attack likely linked to the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a cybersecurity watchdog said. Al Jazeera journalists ‘hacked via NSO Group spyware’.
Citizen Lab’s researchers at the University of Toronto published a report on Sunday detailing how NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware infected the mobile phones of 36 journalists, producers, anchors and executives at the media network which has its headquarters in Qatar.
It says a vulnerability in I-phone operating system software was used.NSO Group has denied the allegation, saying it “lacks any evidence”.
The cybersecurity watchdog attributed the unprecedented attack to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Citizen Lab researchers say that they concluded with “medium confidence” that two attackers who had spied on the phones of Al Jazeera journalists were doing so on behalf of the Saudi Arabian and UAE governments.
The researchers write that the phones were compromised using an exploit chain that we call Kismet.
In the month of July 2020, Kismet was a “zero-day” attack – meaning Apple was supposedly unaware of the flaw – and it worked on at least IOS 13.5.1, and could hack Apple’s I-Phone 11, the latest model at the time.
In confirming the hacking, Tamer Almisshal, an investigative journalist with Al Jazeera Arabic, said a probe was launched after death threats were received on a phone that was used to call ministries in the UAE for a story.
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