NSO Group hacked 36 journalists’ iPhones with spyware: Report

New Delhi, Dec 21 : In a damning report, researchers from Canada-based Citizen Lab have revealed that the Pegasus spyware, developed by Israel-based NSO Group, compromised iPhones of dozens of journalists.
In July and August this year, government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera.
The personal phone of a journalist at London-based Al Araby TV was also hacked, said researchers in a report that came out on Sunday.
“The phones were compromised using an exploit chain that we call KISMET, which appears to involve an invisible zero-click exploit in iMessage” in iPhones.
In July 2020, KISMET was a zero-day against at least iOS 13.5.1 and could hack Apple’s then-latest iPhone 11.
“Based on logs from compromised phones, we believe that NSO Group customers also successfully deployed KISMET or a related zero-click, zero-day exploit between October and December 2019,” said the researchers from the Citizen Lab, which is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.