Politico
July 18, 2021
Military-grade spyware was used to hack the smartphones of dozens of journalists and activists, according to an investigation conducted and reported by 17 media organizations.
The Pegasus spyware was created and leased by the NSO Group, an Israeli firm. It is designed to be used to track terrorists by military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials. However, the list of countries with large numbers of hacking targets suggests the extremely sophisticated spyware may well have been provided to some leaders with problematic human-rights records seeking to persecute enemies, such as Viktor Orban of Hungary.