An official from Hungary's ruling Fidesz party has acknowledged for the first time that the country’s Interior Ministry has bought and used controversial Pegasus spyware developed by Israeli company NSO Group.
Lajos Kosa, chairman of parliament’s Committee on Defense and Law Enforcement, confirmed to journalists following a closed committee session that Hungary had purchased Pegasus software, which was allegedly used to target journalists, businesspeople and an opposition politician.
"I don't see anything objectionable in it," Kosa said, adding that "large tech companies carry out much broader monitoring of citizens than the Hungarian state does."
According to Kosa, the authorities never used Pegasus to spy on Hungarians. The lawmaker has also insisted that Hungary’s security services and Interior Ministry had acted legally in every case of surveillance, receiving permission either from a judge or the Ministry of Justice.
Pegasus spyware can be covertly installed on mobile phones running most versions of iOS and Android. Pegasus is capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing the target device's microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps. In August, security researchers at Citizen Lab uncovered a previously undisclosed zero-click iMessage exploit used to deploy NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware on devices belonging to several Bahraini activists.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce listed NSO Group and the Tel Aviv-based hacking tool company Candiru on a blacklist of restricted companies responsible for the development and dissemination of malicious software.