IPhones of 11 U.S. Embassy employees working in Uganda or on Ugandan issues were hacked in the past few months using a spyware developed by Israel’s NSO Group called Pegasus according to reports by Reuters news agency.
The hack is the first known case of the spyware, known as Pegasus, being used against American officials. Pegasus is a sophisticated surveillance system that can be remotely implanted in smartphones to extract sound and video recordings, encrypted communications, photos, contacts, location data and text messages.
There is no suggestion that NSO itself hacked into the phones, but rather that one of its clients, mostly foreign governments, had directed it against embassy employees.
The disclosure is bound to heighten the tension with Israel over the recent American crackdown on Israeli firms that make surveillance software that has been used to track the locations of dissidents, listen in on their conversations and secretly download files that move through their phones. President Biden plans to make efforts to further crack down on the use of such software a key element of a summit next week at the White House, to which he has invited dozens of countries — including Israel.
Reuters reported earlier on Friday that Apple had notified the U.S. Embassy employees in Uganda last Tuesday about the hack. The people affected include a mix of foreign service officers and locals working for the embassy, all of whom had tied their Apple IDs to their State Department email addresses, according to a person familiar with the attack.
“Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,”
the notice from Apple said.
“These attackers are likely targeting you individually because of who you are or what you do. If your device is compromised by a state-sponsored attacker, they may be able to remotely access your sensitive data, communications, or even the camera and microphone. While it’s possible this is a false alarm, please take this warning seriously,”
Apple said in the notice.
NSO is one of several companies that make money by finding operating system vulnerabilities and selling tools that can exploit them.
