Rendered at 18:21:39 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
petcat 21 hours ago [-]
> In May 2026, Kouloglou contacted the Citizen Lab and we conducted a forensic analysis of artifacts from his iPhone. We found with high confidence that his device was successfully infected with Pegasus spyware on or around October 21, 2022, and again on March 6 and 7, 2023.
matheusmoreira 20 hours ago [-]
I wonder if we can forensically analyze our own phones to see if some nutjob with Pegasus has targeted us as well.
How many nutjobs with Pegasus are really running around out there?
bigiain 16 hours ago [-]
Too many. By which I mean "more than zero". And yes, I'm including nation states as "nutjobs" for the purposes of this calculation.
chatmasta 20 hours ago [-]
I think OP is more worried about one nutjob with a lot of targets.
0123456789ABCDE 12 hours ago [-]
wouldn't that burn the capability rather quickly though?
theoreticalmal 19 hours ago [-]
If I could deploy Pegasus to randoms, I probably would. Wouldn’t do anything with it, but it’d be a cool project
echoangle 19 hours ago [-]
You would probably have to pay for it and wouldn’t then waste the opportunity on random targets without an expected payout, right?
catlifeonmars 17 hours ago [-]
> you would probably have to pay for it
_probably_ is doing the heavy lifting here
21 hours ago [-]
VWWHFSfQ 21 hours ago [-]
>> Further validating our finding of targeting, our forensic analysis shows Kouloglou received multiple Apple threat notifications about targeting with mercenary spyware on three occasions: March 2, 2023, August 29, 2023, and April 10, 2024. It is important to note that threat notifications from Apple and other companies are not real-time alerts. They are typically sent to users in batches, often months or more after targeting takes place.
>> Kouloglou reports to us that he did not recall receiving the Apple notifications we observed.
Am I understanding this correctly that Apple sent him notifications that he was being monitored and he ignored them?
pmontra 21 hours ago [-]
"he did not recall receiving the Apple notifications" so he didn't notice them.
bawolff 20 hours ago [-]
That is kind of surprising given he is on the comittee investigating pegasus. I'd assume someone on the comittee would be paying much more attention to this than a normal person.
I wonder what triggered him to suspect he was hacked then. Since presumably something triggered him to have his phone forensically investigated.
isodev 10 hours ago [-]
> That is kind of surprising
Have you seen notifications on iOS? There are even notifications for the notifications.
But this type of notification I believe is delivered via iMessage and email. So unless you’re actively using iMessage or your icloud email then chances are all this is practically invisible.
tyre 19 hours ago [-]
Or that Apple could either run searches on the names of affected users against publicly known members of government or have close relationship with governments to flag exactly this.
DANmode 20 hours ago [-]
If he knew he was compromised, and was okay with it for one reason or another (like money or other coercion), this is what his cleanup would look like.
Not saying this is likely. Just another possibility.
arka2147483647 21 hours ago [-]
Could those have been intercepted or suppressed somehow?
stavros 20 hours ago [-]
It's possible, if the attacker controls the device enough. I don't think a big "you're being targeted" warning is something you don't notice, or forget.
chatmasta 20 hours ago [-]
Do they send them via notification infrastructure or email? Personally I almost never check the email associated with my Apple ID so I would miss those. But if all my Apple devices were notifying me and I had a badge in Settings.app, I’d notice.
Then again, you’d think that’s the kinda thing malware developers would spend some time learning to hide from the user.
captn3m0 21 hours ago [-]
Do we know how Apple sends these? Is it just a notification, or also email?
I wonder how they detect it, is it for known IOCs that they've already found elsewhere, or do they have heuristic detection that flags things that might need further investigation.
lostlogin 20 hours ago [-]
I could be wrong here, but I can’t see any way of viewing old notifications.
It isn’t hard to accidentally dismiss one then wonder what it was. Why there isn’t there an interface for looking back?
Edit: below it says there are emails and notices on web login.
wwind123 12 hours ago [-]
If a notification is dismissed on iphone, there's indeed no central UI to see it again on the phone. That's a sad state of iphone. Many people have asked, but Apple just doesn't care enough to do it. Now I hope this kind of high-profile security incidents could nudge Apple towards taking action.
brookst 12 hours ago [-]
Any source for that “Apple just doesn’t care”, as opposed to thinking there are security/privacy tradeoffs or other considerations that cut against such a feature?
crewindream 12 hours ago [-]
Ok, apple does not care, but gives “security/privacy” consideration as a public reason for not doing anything.
Y-bar 12 hours ago [-]
If Apple can store the sms/iMessage, and email history, and health/journal history, and my Wallet payment history, in a safe manner I would think Apple can store notification history in a safe manner. How would notifications be meaningfully different from these?
I think the proof of Apple’s level of care is in their lack of attention to this issue.
DANmode 5 hours ago [-]
> How would notifications be meaningfully different from these?
Ephemeral transit layer owned by third-parties constantly,
vs
cold storage of secrets your architecture owns from start to finish.
Y-bar 5 hours ago [-]
> Ephemeral transit layer owned by third-parties constantly
This is a good description of SMS and RCS.
31 minutes ago [-]
DANmode 5 hours ago [-]
and also a good description of Apple APN notifications being pushed to a Garmin watch,
or a car,
or your off-brand earbuds.
Y-bar 4 hours ago [-]
Which, again, is not meaningfully different. Yet it seems you insinuated so. Can you explain in detail?
DANmode 36 minutes ago [-]
Hopefully it wasn’t you who flagged me after asking me to explain in detail…
45 minutes ago [-]
DANmode 59 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
kakacik 9 hours ago [-]
If they cared, they would give user triple confirm option to choose for example.
Oh wait this is apple, they always know whats best for the user and do the choices for them, even when wrong. So all is as expected
CalRobert 12 hours ago [-]
Or he lied about noticing them to avoid embarrassment.
saintfire 20 hours ago [-]
I mean his device was pwnd completely. Its not a stretch that attempts to warn are suppressed.
That or he didn't notice or could have assumed the notice itself was one of many phishing attempts against large orgs.
If I saw a notification that my account was compromised by Pegasus I'd personally assume phishing.
stavros 20 hours ago [-]
Kouloglou is a famous investigative journalist, not you and me. Yes you and I might think we're being scammed, but someone who actually spent a lot of their life getting death threats probably would pay more attention.
benjiro29 20 hours ago [-]
Fairly sure that if anybody using a advanced piece of hacking software, they are also going to delete any messages that are related to detection of such hardware.
PC viruses used to do that stuff going back so many years ago. Suppressing any notification under Windows, by disabling the AV software, its notifications, windows notifications related to it.
So it will amaze me that this is not done by any modern espionage software. Especially as the notification methods are known. Given that his device is hacked, that means a lot of avenues are under control of the espionage software. Even mails etc ... So impersonating the end user, to confirm they read a warning, is extreme easy.
I find it rather odd that people are so fixated on the idea if Kouloglou read it or not.
stavros 20 hours ago [-]
Maybe the software can only exfiltrate information, rather than change it.
benjiro29 20 hours ago [-]
If i was going to write software on this level, that will be used by governments. There is no way, its going to be a nice little program that only extract information.
Its going to have every trick in the book (and outside it), to stay hidden. And it will have payloads to alter its behavior, updates, etc...
Nobody is going to pay you big fat money envelops for software that anybody can write in a afternoon. You want it to be as capable as ever, and you do not want it found!
stavros 20 hours ago [-]
I mean maybe the exploits they found weren't good enough to allow them to do whatever they want with the phone.
EA-3167 21 hours ago [-]
That seems to be the case, although he claims to have somehow missed them. Overall this is one of those stories that's obviously an outrage, except for the fact that every country on Earth spies on the rest, and quite a few private entities do as well. Still the way the game is played if you get caught you have to act ashamed, and the people catching you get to gloat.
It's silly, but it's a show the public never tires of.
healthworker 21 hours ago [-]
In this case he was investigating misuse of Pegasus spyware specifically, and was targeted with it while doing so. That's obstruction of justice, morally speaking, and would feel very scary, in that it would make you feel that this company might be so powerful that investigating it is personally dangerous.
EA-3167 21 hours ago [-]
That's certainly the feeling the story is meant to engender yes.
crewindream 12 hours ago [-]
Alternate spin: He now has a conflict of interest. He’s now too biased to work on the committee.
DANmode 5 hours ago [-]
For who?
hammock 20 hours ago [-]
The US does not spy on Five Eyes government leadership or that of Israel. And perhaps more: in the wake of Snowden, which obliterated many diplomatic relationships the U.S. has with other countries, Obama issued a directive that the U.S. would not monitor heads of state and government of close friends and allies (even outside Five Eyes) unless there was a compelling national security reason. As far as we know that directive has remained in force with each successive administration as well.
They spy on most others though. Germany’s Merkel, successive French presidents etc all had their phones hacked by US there is widely reported news of.
"In December 2010, leaked US diplomatic cables indicated senior New Zealand Defence Ministry officials had been spying for the United States, secretly briefing the United States embassy on Cabinet discussions about the Iraq War."
Nothing has changed post-Snowden, other than that the general public have gone back into a state of apathy on the subject of reigning in their out of control surveillance state.
aetch 3 hours ago [-]
I didn’t say anything has changed, the 2010 example he mentioned is pre Snowden.
matheusmoreira 20 hours ago [-]
> The US does not spy on Five Eyes government leadership or that of Israel.
Doubt.
> unless there was a compelling national security reason
There always is.
EA-3167 20 hours ago [-]
Absolutely, and there's the same compelling reason for them to spy on the on the US in turn. I can't emphasize this enough, everyone is spying on everyone else. Close alliances give the impression that they don't because they tend to handle scandals in-house, it's for everyone's benefit to do so in most cases. Snowden's disclosure was a very unusual event and put everyone in a position of needing to act shocked, appalled, and put on a big show for the public; sweeping it under the rug was impossible. For all that many here would wish otherwise, Snowden wasn't a watershed though, it was a blip.
hammock 19 hours ago [-]
> Doubt
Can you substantiate your doubt with even one piece of hard evidence?
matheusmoreira 19 hours ago [-]
Sure. The NSA exists, and it routinely violates the rights of the USA's own citizens, the ones that actually have constitutional rights. The idea that it would suddenly draw the line on foreigners is just absurd.
MomsAVoxell 15 hours ago [-]
It violates everyones’ human rights - not just the US’ own citizens - because human rights are universal whether some American thinks it or not.
jonnybgood 19 hours ago [-]
Yes, the US has an intelligence agency called the NSA, which works with intelligence agencies in the five eyes. There is something called the five eyes agreement that does draw that line.
matheusmoreira 19 hours ago [-]
> There is something called the five eyes agreement that does draw that line.
> In 1951, Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency agreed not to spy on each other and US and Israeli services cooperated closely since then.
> Nevertheless, there were strong indications afterwards of ongoing Israeli espionage against the United States, confirmed by the 1985 arrest of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, one of the most damaging security leaks in US history.
> Israeli espionage reached a high-profile peak in the mid-1980s, shattering assumptions that allies "do not spy on each other".
senordevnyc 3 hours ago [-]
I'm curious what peril your cynicism about the five eyes agreement has saved you from.
matheusmoreira 34 minutes ago [-]
The peril of sleeping easy at night, comfortable in the fantasy where no government agent would ever spy on me just because they pinky promised not to. Not keen on believing evil bits either.
crewindream 11 hours ago [-]
1. I think burden of proof is on the opposite side. (Previous legislations/directives were circumvented without problem)
2.Asking for hard evidence of top spies secretly spying on heads of other states is … (not sure if there is a word for it; some blend between: unrealistic, unreasonable and oxymoron’ish. If they do their job well, you will not find it out, also it might be illegal or punishable to present such evidence)
Hizonner 18 hours ago [-]
Can you substantiate your certainty with anything other than the public statements of people whose job is to lie about things like that?
benjiro29 20 hours ago [-]
> As far as we know that directive has remained in force with each successive administration as well.
People can state a lot, as long as your not caught.
Nothing prevent you from having the UK spy on the Germans, and feeding that intel back. Or Israel, or ... Hey, the US did not spy on a EU ally. Well, not directly and it neatly bypassed any official statements.
They might have simply gone to one of those secret court hearings and have it bypassed with a gag order in place. Officially its not done, unofficially, its been approved.
The whole "as long as you do not tell me your doing it" approach, and the politicians involve maintain deniability (even if they had the wink).
And you do not need to specific target the head off state. Plenty of side routes to still get information on meetings, that involve those heads of states. Even if your not "directly" spying on them.
So no, its a naïve way of thinking. Maybe in 20 years from now we find out, that they did spy on EU leaders. Maybe directly, maybe indirectly ... even with that directive in place. I will be amazed if they did not. Its the US we are talking about.
codedokode 11 hours ago [-]
> unless there was a compelling national security reason
But there never is a lack of compelling national security reasons.
kakacik 9 hours ago [-]
There is some directive (not law, not constitution - not that those are untouchable now) and we expect current us government to adhere to it, just because it would be nice?
Color me extremely sceptical.
Hizonner 18 hours ago [-]
> every country on Earth spies on the rest,
It's entirely possible an EU country did this; they're only vaguely guessing Belarus or whoever. In most countries, it's a big deal if the spies are caught spying on the domestic government.
> quite a few private entities do as well.
It's a risky game, doing that. You don't get any of the professional courtesies, and you're not usually eligible for the prisoner exchanges.
freehorse 19 hours ago [-]
> we note an overlap between the first infection and a previously identified Pegasus campaign targeting Russian and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe, suggesting a Pegasus customer with authorization to spy in multiple European countries is responsible.
Who has "authorization to spy in multiple European countries"?
In this older article [0] about one of the mentioned russian exiles case it is mentioned that estonia and netherlands have used pegasus outside their borders, but there could be also others with such license
> the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and an unnamed Estonian government agency, appear to use Pegasus extensively outside their borders, including within multiple European countries
However if the link between the russian exiles cases and kouloglou checks (through use of same mode of attack), a country like estonia sounds more likely. However, it can always be that an agency with access to pegasus uses it collaborating with/on behalf of an agency without.
> It is important to note that threat notifications from Apple and other companies are not real-time alerts. They are typically sent to users in batches, often months or more after targeting takes place.
Wow, so Apple is able to detect threat, but does not remove or prevent it, and waits silently for months before notifying a user?
If this is not a security theatre I don't know what is.
hulitu 8 hours ago [-]
> I don't know what is.
PRISM.
elorant 21 hours ago [-]
Around that time a lot of politicians in Greece had their phones hacked by Pegasus. It's an ongoing scandal in Greece that never got fully resolved, although all evidence indicate that it was an operation orchestrated by the office of the prime minister in coordination with the local intelligence service. So I wouldn't call that an attack against the European parliament.
freehorse 20 hours ago [-]
small correction, that is predator/intellexa, not pegasus/nso. So this is different
Everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer.
codedokode 11 hours ago [-]
Isn't it the problem with software architecture choices like large monolitic kernels, lots of unnecessary telemetry/marketing services, legacy APIs, unsafe languages like C, lack of static analysis, etc?
You should threat a phone as an infected ground and do not keep anything important there.
Some leaders simply do not use smartphones and are protected from electronic spyware.
spixy 8 hours ago [-]
Which is difficult since smartphones are used as 2FA, and not every service has web interface, only mobile one (some banks, chats, dating, uber, etc..)
DANmode 5 hours ago [-]
m.uber.com
Never had a bank without a usable web app. You should consider the same!
Stop shooting the web in the foot.
port11 52 minutes ago [-]
With the banks I use, the difference is:
A) on mobile, use my face or 6-digit pin to get in.
B) on web, go get my wallet where my ID is, hunt for the USB digital ID reader, grab a USB-C adapter, put everything together, and either confirm the certificate with a PIN I always forget or use the bank’s own calculator for a login code.
Not exactly a fair setup for the web.
DANmode 46 minutes ago [-]
If you want to sacrifice security for convenience, that’s a different conversation than “I’m forced to”.
Storing credentials in browser password manager (backed up to Google or Apple) is pretty normal stuff for mobile users today.
(Not being able to find your credentials or keep your gear in order is also not a great reason to shoot the web in the foot!)
bawolff 20 hours ago [-]
One interesting thing here, is they imply that both confidential personal medical information and confidential gov docs might have been compromised via the same phone.
Does EU parliment not have a policy of seperating work and personal devices?
dewey 20 hours ago [-]
Having a policy and what happens in the real world are most of the time very different things (Understandably, as the line between work and personal time is often blurry).
bawolff 20 hours ago [-]
True but one would hope though that people dealing with national security would follow more than your average employee.
throw0101d 20 hours ago [-]
> True but one would hope though that people dealing with national security would follow more than your average employee.
The more important you are the more you may think that exceptions can be made for you.
seb1204 5 hours ago [-]
Then it seems the person is not suitable if they don't understand the gravity and their exposure
rich_sasha 2 hours ago [-]
If you're off sick and need to provide a doctor's letter, at some point it will need to touch your employer servers. Just one example.
drdexebtjl 20 hours ago [-]
From what I understood, he took his compromised work phone to the hospital, and the concern is that it may have recorded conversations that contained personal medical information.
He didn’t have medical information on the phone.
juliusceasar 3 hours ago [-]
This couldn't have happened without the knowlege of Israeli government.
"The sale of Pegasus licenses to foreign governments must be approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense."
vivzkestrel 4 hours ago [-]
- extremely stupid question: can they hack you with pegasus spyware if you use a nokia 1100?
- if yes -> extremely stupid suggestion: why cant people in government positions use a nokia 1100 as work phone and some other phone as a personal phone?
Cider9986 2 hours ago [-]
If you're using a nokia, there's no need for expensive mercenary spyware because your messages and calls aren't E2EE.
If they did want to use spyware, it would be significantly cheaper because that phone is (decades?) out of date misses (thousands?) security patches.
superze 9 hours ago [-]
It's always Israel. The most evil and sick country this world has to offer.
So now a foreign actor has committed espionage. Shouldn't this be perceived as a war declaration?
Why is Israel not immediately mentioned in the article?
inigyou 8 hours ago [-]
Almost every country spies on almost every other country. If it was a declaration of war, we'd be at world war nonstop since the time of Jesus Christ.
permalac 10 hours ago [-]
The catalan MEPs also were targeted with Pegasus, and I don't remember the details but at that time the only client were nation states, so Spain was the one to hire the service. Nothing happened.
0x_rs 20 hours ago [-]
Just for context, some european contries have been abusing spyware such as Pegasus so much Israeli firms have cut ties with them, one such example below with Italy. Others have pointed out Greece and Poland. It's quite laughable that a member of the EU parliament would be subject to the same kind of spying activities innocent journalists, activists and possibly normal people are, all of that by the member states of the union, directly contributing to the Israeli companies developing and spreading malware.
Cutting ties after there has been an outcry is damage controll. I would assume that the product is still available under another sub vendor to the same people.
omnimus 19 hours ago [-]
Of course it's damage control. The post just tries to paint the europeans as incompetent to hold the power. The company making spyware is somehow wise, righteous and saintly.
throw1234567891 13 hours ago [-]
They’ll quickly make up some law forcing someone to do something, or throw some hefty fine at someone, and it’ll be sorted pronto. Someone’s gotta be held responsible.
CalRobert 12 hours ago [-]
Would lockdown mode on iOS stop this?
inigyou 8 hours ago [-]
Probably, that's the point of it, however your smartphone becomes a very dumbphone in lockdown mode, intentionally to reduce attack surface. It's only really practical if you just need a dumb phone system endpoint to send and receive SMS and PSTN calls and check the time.
CalRobert 31 minutes ago [-]
Mine has been on lockdown mode for months and all I’ve noticed is some images not loading on sites.
r3trohack3r 3 hours ago [-]
I keep my phone in lockdown mode and haven’t noticed too many problems day-to-day.
A few minor inconveniences (webGL doesn’t work, the magic automatic code from SMS keyboard integration is gone, etc.) but overall the phone is still a smart phone.
jojobas 19 hours ago [-]
Euro Parliament/Euro Commission are comically open to espionage. French/Belgian counterintelligence are not allowed to do much, and there is little in terms of EU counterintelligence.
greatgib 18 hours ago [-]
There will be no real consequence, as always, just more paperwork, so how to expect that anything will change?
Hizonner 19 hours ago [-]
How is it that any NSO employee is still able to travel outside Israel without getting arrested? Seems like they're involved in criminal conspiracies in like half the countries in the world.
Not quite surprising. The more important question is: how much are lobbyists paid to sell out data of EU citizens to US corporations here? Will they prevail?
There is enough money to go around for certain.
r3trohack3r 21 hours ago [-]
Pro tip: if you’re going to try a propoganda - don’t be so transparent on your redirect.
thin_carapace 20 hours ago [-]
if you believe that the parent comment is propaganda, would you care to share why exactly you believe that the average european citizen benefits from mass surveillance funnelled through american channels?
r3trohack3r 17 hours ago [-]
Two things can be true. The most compelling redirects refocus the conversation on another truth.
thin_carapace 15 hours ago [-]
the average person isnt taught to handle cognitive dissonance, maybe thats why lying by omission is such an effective propaganda technique. thank you for clarifying your perspective
jongjong 20 hours ago [-]
It feels like they've been paid to sell out the users themselves, not just the data. It's weird that EU is so dependant on US tech when it comes to media platforms... While there are alternatives out there. In a lot of related areas in tech, it feels like suppression.
leonidasrup 20 hours ago [-]
"PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies.
The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012
"
This might be taken as hyperbolic, but the EU seems to have trouble building anything.
jongjong 20 hours ago [-]
This is where I disagree as a software engineer who has seen EU products built and not adopted... I've also built products myself which were fully functioning and scalable but not widely adopted. Building is not the bottleneck.
It feels like there is a limit on distribution. Just getting people to try a product is incredibly hard. Very hard to reach them and ads feel like they're only served to bots.
DocTomoe 20 hours ago [-]
Network effects are real. It is hard to convince people to move over to your platform if the selling argument is 'not quite there yet, but we got you covered on the minilib front, plus it's less usable because of our weird interpretation of our own data protection laws'.
jongjong 20 hours ago [-]
Yes and my perspective is that GDPR has harmed EU startups and helped US companies by virtue of them being incumbents and having the resources to dedicate to compliance. Probably can't be fixed as easily now because of corporate culture around standards like SOC2 and ISO27001... Which I think are more harmful to security than helpful as they create complacency and hinder progress by creating barriers.
r_lee 10 hours ago [-]
that is most of the EU legislation
making/operating companies, getting access to banking, hiring, etc..
all those things are catered towards multinationals by endless bureaucracy and requirements that need consultants/lawyers
it's by design
inigyou 8 hours ago [-]
At the same time there are plenty of European companies, so clearly the increased barriers aren't a deal breaker.
r_lee 5 hours ago [-]
so you think if there were barriers then there would be no European companies or what?
stavros 20 hours ago [-]
There's a decision to be made whether corporations should be allowed to do anything they want or not. The countries that choose to let them do what they want, will obviously give them an advantage over the countries that don't.
You and I, however, are not corporations, so maybe it's in our best interest if they actually aren't allowed to do whatever they want.
_probably_ is doing the heavy lifting here
>> Kouloglou reports to us that he did not recall receiving the Apple notifications we observed.
Am I understanding this correctly that Apple sent him notifications that he was being monitored and he ignored them?
I wonder what triggered him to suspect he was hacked then. Since presumably something triggered him to have his phone forensically investigated.
Have you seen notifications on iOS? There are even notifications for the notifications.
But this type of notification I believe is delivered via iMessage and email. So unless you’re actively using iMessage or your icloud email then chances are all this is practically invisible.
Not saying this is likely. Just another possibility.
Then again, you’d think that’s the kinda thing malware developers would spend some time learning to hide from the user.
>A Threat Notification is displayed at the top of the page after the user signs into account.apple.com.
>Apple sends an email and iMessage notification to the email addresses and phone numbers associated with the user’s Apple Account.
You can see what it looks like in https://reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1c10jai/i_have_received...
I wonder how they detect it, is it for known IOCs that they've already found elsewhere, or do they have heuristic detection that flags things that might need further investigation.
It isn’t hard to accidentally dismiss one then wonder what it was. Why there isn’t there an interface for looking back?
Edit: below it says there are emails and notices on web login.
I think the proof of Apple’s level of care is in their lack of attention to this issue.
Ephemeral transit layer owned by third-parties constantly,
vs
cold storage of secrets your architecture owns from start to finish.
This is a good description of SMS and RCS.
or a car,
or your off-brand earbuds.
Oh wait this is apple, they always know whats best for the user and do the choices for them, even when wrong. So all is as expected
That or he didn't notice or could have assumed the notice itself was one of many phishing attempts against large orgs.
If I saw a notification that my account was compromised by Pegasus I'd personally assume phishing.
PC viruses used to do that stuff going back so many years ago. Suppressing any notification under Windows, by disabling the AV software, its notifications, windows notifications related to it.
So it will amaze me that this is not done by any modern espionage software. Especially as the notification methods are known. Given that his device is hacked, that means a lot of avenues are under control of the espionage software. Even mails etc ... So impersonating the end user, to confirm they read a warning, is extreme easy.
I find it rather odd that people are so fixated on the idea if Kouloglou read it or not.
Its going to have every trick in the book (and outside it), to stay hidden. And it will have payloads to alter its behavior, updates, etc...
Nobody is going to pay you big fat money envelops for software that anybody can write in a afternoon. You want it to be as capable as ever, and you do not want it found!
It's silly, but it's a show the public never tires of.
They spy on most others though. Germany’s Merkel, successive French presidents etc all had their phones hacked by US there is widely reported news of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_espionage_in_Aus...
"In December 2010, leaked US diplomatic cables indicated senior New Zealand Defence Ministry officials had been spying for the United States, secretly briefing the United States embassy on Cabinet discussions about the Iraq War."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_espionage_in_New_Zeala...
Doubt.
> unless there was a compelling national security reason
There always is.
Can you substantiate your doubt with even one piece of hard evidence?
Believe such nonsense at your own peril.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_espionage_in_the_Unite...
> In 1951, Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency agreed not to spy on each other and US and Israeli services cooperated closely since then.
> Nevertheless, there were strong indications afterwards of ongoing Israeli espionage against the United States, confirmed by the 1985 arrest of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, one of the most damaging security leaks in US history.
> Israeli espionage reached a high-profile peak in the mid-1980s, shattering assumptions that allies "do not spy on each other".
2.Asking for hard evidence of top spies secretly spying on heads of other states is … (not sure if there is a word for it; some blend between: unrealistic, unreasonable and oxymoron’ish. If they do their job well, you will not find it out, also it might be illegal or punishable to present such evidence)
People can state a lot, as long as your not caught.
Nothing prevent you from having the UK spy on the Germans, and feeding that intel back. Or Israel, or ... Hey, the US did not spy on a EU ally. Well, not directly and it neatly bypassed any official statements.
They might have simply gone to one of those secret court hearings and have it bypassed with a gag order in place. Officially its not done, unofficially, its been approved.
The whole "as long as you do not tell me your doing it" approach, and the politicians involve maintain deniability (even if they had the wink).
And you do not need to specific target the head off state. Plenty of side routes to still get information on meetings, that involve those heads of states. Even if your not "directly" spying on them.
So no, its a naïve way of thinking. Maybe in 20 years from now we find out, that they did spy on EU leaders. Maybe directly, maybe indirectly ... even with that directive in place. I will be amazed if they did not. Its the US we are talking about.
But there never is a lack of compelling national security reasons.
Color me extremely sceptical.
It's entirely possible an EU country did this; they're only vaguely guessing Belarus or whoever. In most countries, it's a big deal if the spies are caught spying on the domestic government.
> quite a few private entities do as well.
It's a risky game, doing that. You don't get any of the professional courtesies, and you're not usually eligible for the prisoner exchanges.
Who has "authorization to spy in multiple European countries"?
In this older article [0] about one of the mentioned russian exiles case it is mentioned that estonia and netherlands have used pegasus outside their borders, but there could be also others with such license
> the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and an unnamed Estonian government agency, appear to use Pegasus extensively outside their borders, including within multiple European countries
However if the link between the russian exiles cases and kouloglou checks (through use of same mode of attack), a country like estonia sounds more likely. However, it can always be that an agency with access to pegasus uses it collaborating with/on behalf of an agency without.
[0] https://www.accessnow.org/publication/hacking-meduza-pegasus...
Wow, so Apple is able to detect threat, but does not remove or prevent it, and waits silently for months before notifying a user?
If this is not a security theatre I don't know what is.
PRISM.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/02/26/poland-charges-former...
Everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer.
You should threat a phone as an infected ground and do not keep anything important there.
Some leaders simply do not use smartphones and are protected from electronic spyware.
Never had a bank without a usable web app. You should consider the same!
Stop shooting the web in the foot.
A) on mobile, use my face or 6-digit pin to get in.
B) on web, go get my wallet where my ID is, hunt for the USB digital ID reader, grab a USB-C adapter, put everything together, and either confirm the certificate with a PIN I always forget or use the bank’s own calculator for a login code.
Not exactly a fair setup for the web.
Storing credentials in browser password manager (backed up to Google or Apple) is pretty normal stuff for mobile users today.
(Not being able to find your credentials or keep your gear in order is also not a great reason to shoot the web in the foot!)
Does EU parliment not have a policy of seperating work and personal devices?
The more important you are the more you may think that exceptions can be made for you.
He didn’t have medical information on the phone.
"The sale of Pegasus licenses to foreign governments must be approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense."
- if yes -> extremely stupid suggestion: why cant people in government positions use a nokia 1100 as work phone and some other phone as a personal phone?
If they did want to use spyware, it would be significantly cheaper because that phone is (decades?) out of date misses (thousands?) security patches.
So now a foreign actor has committed espionage. Shouldn't this be perceived as a war declaration?
Why is Israel not immediately mentioned in the article?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgmzdjw24yo
A few minor inconveniences (webGL doesn’t work, the magic automatic code from SMS keyboard integration is gone, etc.) but overall the phone is still a smart phone.
There is enough money to go around for certain.
The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012 "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
It feels like there is a limit on distribution. Just getting people to try a product is incredibly hard. Very hard to reach them and ads feel like they're only served to bots.
making/operating companies, getting access to banking, hiring, etc..
all those things are catered towards multinationals by endless bureaucracy and requirements that need consultants/lawyers
it's by design
You and I, however, are not corporations, so maybe it's in our best interest if they actually aren't allowed to do whatever they want.