Phones of at least two journalists and a human life defender have been hacked and accessed with the Pegasus spyware, between 2019 and 2021 during the term of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, despite the government guaranteeing that it would no longer be using the spyware technology.
The findings were made at Citizen Lab, a digital watchdog group based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It was detected that the spyware in fact belonged to Israel’s NSO Group. Reportedly, Pegasus broke into victims’ phones, providing the actors access to their devices, which were then traded with the government and law enforcement.
President Lopez, in a statement made in 2021 said there was “no longer any relation” with Pegasus. In addition, Mexico’s financial crime chief stated that the administration had not signed contracts with companies that procured the spyware.
“This new report definitively shows that Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador can no longer hide behind blaming his predecessor for widespread use of Pegasus in Mexico [...] Mexican authorities must immediately and transparently investigate the use of Pegasus and other spyware to target journalists during his administration, as well as push for more regulations to end the use of this technology against the press once and for all,” stated CPJ’S Mexico representative, Jan-Albert Hootsen.
The President’s statement promising that the country would not use the spyware was followed by a dozen media organizations revealing that the phone numbers of at least 50 people linked to the Mexican president were leaked. These people, popularly known as Amlo, included his wife, children, and doctor, with their leaked database at the heart of the Pegasus Project, an investigation into NSO.
The phone of an anonymous journalist of an online outlet Animal Politico was infected by the spyware in 2021, Journalist Ricardo Raphael, a columnist at news magazine Proceso and newspaper Milenio Diario who was previously infected in 2016 and 2017, was attacked with Pegasus in October, and December 2019 and December 2020, at least three times.
While Citizen Lab reported that the recent attacks differ in numerous ways from the previous ones, including the use of zero-click attacks instead of malicious e-mails and messages with an intention of tricking the targets into clicking on links, triggering the infections.
In regards to the recent attacks, Citizen Lab stated, “These latest cases, which come years after the first revelations of problematic Pegasus targeting in Mexico, illustrate the abuse potential of mercenary spyware in a context of flawed public accountability and transparency. Even in the face of global scrutiny, domestic outcry, and a new administration that pledged to never use spyware, the targeting of journalists and human rights defenders with Pegasus spyware continued in Mexico.”
