The Palestinian Authority said on Thursday it has discovered spyware from Israeli hacking firm NSO Group on the phones of three senior officials.
Several phones belonging to officials were inspected by a “professional Palestinian institution,” which detected Pegasus software on three of them, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry, which blamed Israel and called the act a “blatant and immoral violation of international law,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday.
“We are 100% sure that these three phones were hacked,” said Ahmed al Deek, the assistant Palestinian foreign minister for political affairs. “They belonged to senior officials.”
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This is the first time Palestinian officials have claimed NSO software was used to spy on them. A Pegasus infection gives hackers access to everything stored on a phone, including real-time communications.
NSO Group declined to comment on the allegations blaming it for the hacking, saying it does not disclose its clients and does not have information on the individuals it targets, according to the report.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
A similar statement came from six Palestinian activists earlier this week, who claimed to have found the same spyware on their own phones on Monday. Half the phones hacked belonged to activists affiliated with groups Israel deemed as terrorists last month.
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In July, NSO Group was accused of successfully hacking the phones of dozens of journalists, government officials, and business leaders globally. The company denied that either it or its clients used Pegasus software to hack 37 phones, which appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers.
NSO Group and a lesser-known Israeli competitor, Candiru, were blacklisted by the Biden administration on Nov. 3, barring the companies from U.S. technology. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said the department was doing so in order to “hold companies accountable” and to stop them from using technology in “malicious” ways.
