Pegasus spyware software: Polish government spyware scandal

The spyware scandal in our neighboring country Poland is spreading. Once again, politicians from the opposition have been spied on using the Pegasus spyware.

Spyware scandal rocks Poland

As the AP news service reports, opposition politicians in Poland have again been spied on by spyware. The most prominent victim of the spyware attack is Krzysztof Brejza of the Polish Civic Platform. His smartphone was hacked a total of 33 times with the Pegasus spyware in 2019 alone.

At the time, Brejza was the head of a campaign against the right-wing populist PiS party in the parliamentary elections in Poland, but whether the hack is directly connected to this has not yet been definitively clarified.

However, other opposition figures have since submitted evidence to the Polish government proving that their phones were hacked by the Pegasus spy software, reports The Verge.

The evidence comes from the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab. The researchers have been on the trail of deployments of Pegasus spy software, which originated from Israeli hacking firm NSO Group, for years. The malware enables remote monitoring of smartphones.

Polish government denies using the spyware

To Politico Europe, on the other hand, the Polish government denies all use of a spyware: “The Pegasus system is not used by Polish services,” a statement from the Polish Defense Ministry said.

While the Polish government denies using Pegasus, some major international corporations have already responded to the spyware attacks. Apple, for example, already filed a lawsuit against NSO Group, and Amazon Web Services had also blocked all accounts associated with the company. Even the U.S. Treasury Department has blocked all transactions from NSO.