An American journalist intends to sue Saudi Arabia for spying on his phone after it was hacked by an Israeli program.
Ben Hubbard, a New York Times correspondent in Beirut, revealed that his phone had been hacked by the controversial Israeli spy program Pegasus after receiving two suspicious Saudi messages.
In an article published in the Journalist, the reporter said that after experts told him he had been hacked, he contacted Citizen Lab Canada because he wanted to know when the hack occurred on his phone. . Attempts and what information has been stolen.
The author noted that his phone was hacked in 2018 after receiving a suspicious text message. Citizen Lab confirmed that it was sent from Saudi Arabia using Pegasus spy software developed by the Israeli company “SO Group”.
A member of the technology security team found out that his phone was hacked again on June 2, 2018.
The attack was carried out via a WhatsApp message inviting him to appear under his own name to cover a protest in front of the Saudi embassy in Washington.
Bill Marzak, a senior fellow at Citizen Labs, said there was no indication that any of these efforts were successful because he did not click on any of the links in the two messages.
And two hacking attempts in 2020 and 2021 were found with what is known as “zero-click”, allowing a hacker to enter a link without any clicks, a process similar to stealing a ghost.
Marzak says that in the second attempt, the hacker removed any trace of the first attempt. Technology security experts said it was difficult to identify the perpetrator.
Based on the code found on his phone, Marzak is overly certain that the spyware used in these four cases was Pegasus.
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In the previous two attempts, the party was responsible for Saudi Arabia, because it was the electronic server of the party that targeted Saudi activists.
In the 2020 and 2021 efforts, it is not clear who or which country carried out the hack.
But Marzak noted that the second attempt was an account used to spy on the account of a Saudi activist.
Ben Hubbard, in turn, said: In Mexico, the government hacked the phones of journalists and activists, and Saudi Arabia hacked the phones of dissidents inside and outside the country and arrested a number of them. And the ruler of Dubai hacked his ex-wife and his lawyer.
He said: “I should not have been surprised when I was recently told that I had been hacked, but it was not reassuring.
Ben Hubbard explained that As a New York Times reporter specializing in Middle East news, he interviews people who risk their lives to provide information that their oppressive rulers want to keep secret, and “take every precaution to protect it because if they get caught, they will end up in prison or in the grave.”