Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, May 6 (Xinhua) The head of Spain's intelligence services was questioned in parliament on the 5th after the mobile phones of the Spanish prime minister and defense minister were attacked by the spyware "Pegasus" last year.
Several media reported that the director of the Spanish National Intelligence Center, Pas Esteban Lopez, attended a closed-door hearing of a special committee of the parliament that day.
The Spanish government confirmed on the 2nd that the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles were attacked by the spyware "Pegasus" last year, resulting in a certain amount of information leakage.
However, several previous regular inspections by the National Intelligence Center failed to detect the problem.
Spanish government spokesman Isabel Rodriguez admitted in an interview with the media that "obviously something went wrong" and that the government is improving to ensure that these mistakes do not happen again.
The "Pegasus" software, developed by the Israeli network security company NSO Group, can be secretly implanted in mobile phones, extract data, activate cameras or microphones, and then surreptitiously monitor mobile phone owners.
The NSO Group claims to only sell the software to government agencies, which are used to fight crime and terrorist activities, and have been approved by the Israeli government.
A joint investigation released by several media and two non-governmental groups in July last year showed that the Pegasus software attacked about 50,000 phone numbers worldwide from 2016 to June last year, targeting heads of state, senior officials, and journalists. Among them is French President Emmanuel Macron.
(Li Yannan)