Amnesty International’s Security Lab provided technical support. Pegasus Software is an award winning supplier of accounting and business software, supply chain, manufacturing, construction, cloud accounting software and payroll software solutions, with over 30. It was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit that focuses on telling the stories of journalists under threat. The Pegasus Project is a collaborative investigation into NSO Group, an Israeli “cyber intelligence” company that sells sophisticated spyware to governments around the world. Working with new data from the journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and human rights group Amnesty International, OCCRP and 16 media partners around the world worked to uncover who might have fallen victim to Pegasus, and tell their stories. So when a group of journalists gained access to a list of 50,000 phone numbers that had allegedly been picked as targets of the spyware, we sprang into action.

The spyware, sold as a crime-fighting tool, is already known to have been used against journalists, activists, and political dissidents.īut NSO Group is so secretive, and its product is so stealthy, that it’s been nearly impossible to understand the scope of its use. Through Pegasus, corrupt and troubled regimes across the world can gain access to vast troves of personal information on just about anyone they want.

Their tool used to break in was Pegasus, a cutting-edge spyware product made by the Israeli company NSO Group. The perpetrators were most likely their own governments. Even their cameras could be activated to snap photos at the will of a faraway attacker. Their private moments and their professional secrets became instantly accessible. But in those silent seconds, a digital intruder entered their phones.

Pegasus hacking software