Nicosia (AFP)
The telephone communications of dozens of employees of the Al-Jazeera channel in Qatar were intercepted by sophisticated spyware, said on Monday one of those targeted, following an investigation by Citizen Lab experts who lasted for months.
The operation, which affects 36 people, was revealed in a report published Sunday by the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto, which specializes in issues of computer censorship.
"The impact is very clear and dangerous," Tamer al-Misshal, Al-Jazeera investigative journalist in Arabic, who is one of those targeted, told AFP.
Al-Jazeera said it contacted the Citizen Lab in January after suspicion of hacking, and experts at that lab discovered that data exchanged on phones was being smuggled to a hostile server.
“We got the logbooks” from a cell phone in Al-Jazeera networks.
“Our analysis indicates that (spyware) has a number of capabilities,” Citizen Lab said in its report.
Depending on the laboratory, it can intercept audio from a microphone, photos, trace the location of the device or even access passwords and stored information.
The attack targeted "36 phones belonging to journalists, producers, presenters and Al-Jazeera executives," the Citizen Lab added, claiming the hack used spyware Pegasus developed by the NSO group of Israel.
But the Israeli group said the Citizen Lab report was "speculation and there was no evidence of a connection with the NSO."
The NSO does not do direct surveillance, he added.
"Without this surveillance and observation process (from Citizen Lab), we would never have been able to detect" the intrusion on the phones, "Misshal said.
"It is a violation and a crime", he added, specifying in particular that some of the sources of Al-Jazeera did not want to be named.
burs / vl
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