Discussion summary
Discussions focus on espionage concerns involving the European Parliament, US tech dependency, and potential government responses. Participants question the influence of lobbyists, the role of NSO Group, and the effectiveness of security measures.
What the discussion says
- Lobbyists may be paid to sell EU citizens' data to US companies.
- US tech dependency in EU media platforms is problematic.
- Lockdown mode on iOS could prevent some espionage but impacts usability.
- No significant consequences are expected; more regulations or fines are likely.
“How much are lobbyists paid to sell out data of EU citizens?”
“US tech dependency in EU media platforms is concerning.”
Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- This couldn't have happened without the knowlege of Israeli government.
"The sale of Pegasus licenses to foreign governments must be approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense."
by juliusceasar - Euro Parliament/Euro Commission are comically open to espionage. French/Belgian counterintelligence are not allowed to do much, and there is little in terms of EU counterintelligence.by jojobas
- Isn't it the problem with software architecture choices like large monolitic kernels, lots of unnecessary telemetry/marketing services, legacy APIs, unsafe languages like C, lack of static analysis, etc?
You should threat a phone as an infected ground and do not keep anything important there.
Some leaders simply do not use smartphones and are protected from electronic spyware.
by codedokode - One interesting thing here, is they imply that both confidential personal medical information and confidential gov docs might have been compromised via the same phone.
Does EU parliment not have a policy of seperating work and personal devices?
by bawolff - > It is important to note that threat notifications from Apple and other companies are not real-time alerts. They are typically sent to users in batches, often months or more after targeting takes place.
Wow, so Apple is able to detect threat, but does not remove or prevent it, and waits silently for months before notifying a user?
If this is not a security theatre I don't know what is.
by zx8080 - Around that time a lot of politicians in Greece had their phones hacked by Pegasus. It's an ongoing scandal in Greece that never got fully resolved, although all evidence indicate that it was an operation orchestrated by the office of the prime minister in coordination with the local intelligence service. So I wouldn't call that an attack against the European parliament.by elorant
- > we note an overlap between the first infection and a previously identified Pegasus campaign targeting Russian and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe, suggesting a Pegasus customer with authorization to spy in multiple European countries is responsible.
Who has "authorization to spy in multiple European countries"?
In this older article [0] about one of the mentioned russian exiles case it is mentioned that estonia and netherlands have used pegasus outside their borders, but there could be also others with such license
> the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and an unnamed Estonian government agency, appear to use Pegasus extensively outside their borders, including within multiple European countries
However if the link between the russian exiles cases and kouloglou checks (through use of same mode of attack), a country like estonia sounds more likely. However, it can always be that an agency with access to pegasus uses it collaborating with/on behalf of an agency without.
[0] https://www.accessnow.org/publication/hacking-meduza-pegasus...
by freehorse - > In May 2026, Kouloglou contacted the Citizen Lab and we conducted a forensic analysis of artifacts from his iPhone. We found with high confidence that his device was successfully infected with Pegasus spyware on or around October 21, 2022, and again on March 6 and 7, 2023.by petcat