Pegasus spyware: Spain's prime minister and defence minister's phones infected by spying software

euronews.com:

Mobile phones belonging to Spain's prime minister and defence minister were infected by Pegasus spyware last year, a government spokesperson said on Monday.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s mobile phone was breached twice in May 2021, and Defence Minister Margarita Robles’ device was targeted once the following month, Presidency Minister Félix Bolaños told reporters at a morning press conference.

"We have no doubt that this is an illicit, unauthorised intervention," Bolaños said. "It comes from outside state organisations and it didn’t have judicial authorisation".

The Pegasus spyware behind the attack is produced by Israeli security firm NSO, which says it only sells the software to government agencies.

Bolaños said that technical reports by Spain's National Cryptologic Centre had evaluated the volume of data extracted from the two devices.

In all, 2.6 gigabytes of information was obtained from the Spanish prime minister's phone during the first attack and 130 megabytes during the second, while 9 gigabytes were stolen from the defence minister.

"There is no evidence of any intrusion after these dates," Bolaños said.

Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron was among 14 current or former heads of state on a list of potential Pegasus targets leaked to human rights organisation Amnesty International.

Spain’s Socialist-led government is under pressure to explain why devices belonging to dozens of people connected to the separatist movement in the northeastern Catalonia region were infected with Pegasus between 2017 and 2020, according to an analysis by Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity group of experts affiliated with the University of Toronto.

The revelations involve at least 65 people, including elected officials, lawyers and