A new report from the Citizen Lab has revealed that former Member of the European Parliament Stelios Kouloglou had his mobile device repeatedly hacked with the notorious Pegasus spyware while serving on a committee that was tasked with investigating the abuse of such commercial surveillance tools in the bloc.
“Through forensic analysis of his device, we found that the attackers could have had access to confidential documents and committee deliberations,” the Citizen Lab researchers John Scott-Railton, Bill Marczak, Bahr Abdul Razzak, Kate Pundyk, Siena Anstis, and Ron Deibert said.
The infections have not been attributed to a particular government at this time, and there is no evidence that the Greek government is behind the activity. However, the Canadian interdisciplinary research laboratory noted that it identified an overlap between the first infection and a previous campaign targeting Russian and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe.
This indicates that a Pegasus customer with authorization to spy in multiple European countries is likely responsible for the effort, the Citizen Lab added.
Kouloglou was a member of the European Parliament’s “Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware” from March 24, 2022, to July 18, 2023. The PEGA Committee was set up on March 10, 2022, to probe alleged misuses of commercial spyware offerings under E.U. law, specifically focusing on gathering information on the extent to which member states and other countries are using such tools in contravention of the region’s rights and freedoms.
The Citizen Lab said that a forensic analysis of artifacts collected from his iPhone in May 2026 has found that it was compromised with Pegasus spyware on or around October 21, 2022, and again on March 6 and 7, 2023.
“On 2022-10-21 10:16, there was a lookup for a HomeKit email address rauharepo888[@]gmail.com. Two minutes later, a Pegasus process used mobile data,” the researchers explained. It’s assessed that a zero-click exploit in Apple’s smart home software, codenamed PWNYOURHOME, was used to deliver the spyware. The issue was addressed by Apple in iOS 16.3.1.
The subsequent Pegasus activity observed in March 2023 is also said to have weaponized the same exploit. At both times, Kouloglou’s device was running iOS 15.5. Further analysis of the phone has revealed that Kouloglou received Apple threat notifications about being targeted with mercenary spyware on three occasions: March 2, 2023, August 29, 2023, and April 10, 2024.
Interestingly, during the first time Kouloglou’s phone was hacked, he was admitted to a hospital for elective surgery and had been visited by Greek investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who had his own phone compromised with Intellexa’s Predator spyware and had testified before the PEGA Committee a month before.
The timing of the second infection in March 2023 is also significant, as it coincided with the…
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