Senior officials at the European Commission were last year targeted with spy software designed by an Israeli surveillance firm, according to two EU officials and documentation reviewed by Reuters.
Among them was Didier Reynders, a senior Belgian statesman who has served as the European Commissioner for Justice since 2019, one of the documents show.
At least four other commission staffers were also targeted, according to the document and another person familiar with the matter.
Photo: Reuters
The two EU officials confirmed that staffers at the commission had been targeted, but did not provide details.
APPLE WARNING
The commission became aware of the targeting following messages issued by Apple to thousands of iPhone owners in November last year telling them they were “targeted by state-sponsored attackers,” the two EU officials said.
It was the first time Apple had sent a mass alert to users that they were in government hackers’ crosshairs.
The warnings triggered immediate concern at the commission, the two officials said.
In a Nov. 26 e-mail reviewed by Reuters, a senior tech staffer sent a message to colleagues with background about Israeli hacking tools and a request to be on the lookout for additional warnings from Apple.
“Given the nature of your responsibilities, you are a potential target,” the staffer said in the e-mail, reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters was unable to determine who used the Israeli spyware to target Reynders and his Brussels-based colleagues, whether the attempts were successful, and, if so, what the hackers might have obtained as a result.
Security researchers have said the recipients of the warnings were targeted between February and September last year using ForcedEntry, an advanced piece of software that was used by Israeli cybersurveillance vendor NSO Group to help foreign spy agencies remotely and invisibly take control of iPhones.
A smaller Israeli spyware vendor named QuaDream also sold a nearly identical tool to government clients, Reuters previously reported.
NSO said in a statement that it was not responsible for the hacking attempts, saying the targeting described by Reuters “could not have happened with NSO’s tools.”
LAWSUITS
The company, which faces a number of overlapping lawsuits and was recently blacklisted by US officials over alleged human rights abuses, said it supported an investigation into the targeting and called for the establishment of global rules to govern the spyware industry.
QuaDream, which keeps a lower profile, did not return repeated messages.
IT experts examined at least some of the officials’ smartphones for signs of compromise, but the results were inconclusive, said the two EU sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
News of the targeting comes as the EU is beginning to follow the US in taking a harder look at spyware merchants like NSO.
The European Parliament is on Tuesday next week to launch a committee of inquiry to investigate the use of surveillance software in European member states, according to Sophie in ’t Veld, the EU lawmaker who championed the committee’s creation.
In ’t Veld told Reuters that she had been unaware that European Commission officials were targeted, calling the news “dynamite.”
“We really have to get to the bottom of this,” she said.
It was important not to jump to conclusions about who might be responsible, said Kenneth Lasoen, a research fellow at the Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations.
The EU “are a very high-profile target for multiple actors,” Lasoen said. “Brussels is a true nest of espionage.”
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