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.”
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- Hacker News
- They’ll quickly make up some law forcing someone to do something, or throw some hefty fine at someone, and it’ll be sorted pronto. Someone’s gotta be held responsible.
- The catalan MEPs also were targeted with Pegasus, and I don't remember the details but at that time the only client were nation states, so Spain was the one to hire the service. Nothing happened.by permalac
- - extremely stupid question: can they hack you with pegasus spyware if you use a nokia 1100?
- if yes -> extremely stupid suggestion: why cant people in government positions use a nokia 1100 as work phone and some other phone as a personal phone?
by vivzkestrel - If you're using a nokia, there's no need for expensive mercenary spyware because your messages and calls aren't E2EE.
If they did want to use spyware, it would be significantly cheaper because that phone is (decades?) out of date misses (thousands?) security patches.
by Cider9986 - Just for context, some european contries have been abusing spyware such as Pegasus so much Israeli firms have cut ties with them, one such example below with Italy. Others have pointed out Greece and Poland. It's quite laughable that a member of the EU parliament would be subject to the same kind of spying activities innocent journalists, activists and possibly normal people are, all of that by the member states of the union, directly contributing to the Israeli companies developing and spreading malware.by 0x_rs
- Cutting ties after there has been an outcry is damage controll. I would assume that the product is still available under another sub vendor to the same people.
- 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 - Which is difficult since smartphones are used as 2FA, and not every service has web interface, only mobile one (some banks, chats, dating, uber, etc..)by spixy
- 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 - If you're off sick and need to provide a doctor's letter, at some point it will need to touch your employer servers. Just one example.by rich_sasha
- From what I understood, he took his compromised work phone to the hospital, and the concern is that it may have recorded conversations that contained personal medical information.
He didn’t have medical information on the phone.
by drdexebtjl - Having a policy and what happens in the real world are most of the time very different things (Understandably, as the line between work and personal time is often blurry).by dewey
- > 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 - > I don't know what is.
PRISM.
by hulitu - 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
- small correction, that is predator/intellexa, not pegasus/nso. So this is differentby freehorse
- Same story in Poland:
https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/02/26/poland-charges-former...
Everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer.
by Krasnol - No, it was the Predator rootkit that presumably was introduced directly from the PM to infect many politicians, even of his own party. This lead to the uncovering of the long-standing agricultural scandal of OPEKEPE gov org and is going to lead to the largest constitutional change in modern Greek history, after and only if he wins the elections next spring: among others lifting of minister immunity and reduction of the number of parliament members. Through the revelation of corrupt politicians' acts based on their phone data leakage, the public opinion turns against them and accepts the changes easier.by tsoukase
- > 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 - It's authorisation by the Israeli company providing Pegasus. So anyone who either pays enough or is serving Israeli interests.by goobatrooba
- > 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
- >> Further validating our finding of targeting, our forensic analysis shows Kouloglou received multiple Apple threat notifications about targeting with mercenary spyware on three occasions: March 2, 2023, August 29, 2023, and April 10, 2024. 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.
>> Kouloglou reports to us that he did not recall receiving the Apple notifications we observed.
Am I understanding this correctly that Apple sent him notifications that he was being monitored and he ignored them?
by VWWHFSfQ - I wonder if we can forensically analyze our own phones to see if some nutjob with Pegasus has targeted us as well.