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By Mary Beth Sheridan and Craig Timberg
January 12, 2022|Updated yesterday at 12:12 p.m. EST
At least 22 journalists from the independent Salvadoran news site El Faro were targeted with telephone spyware, investigators announced Wednesday, in one of the most extensive attacks yet discovered using the Pegasus software that human rights advocates say has been abused by governments around the world.
The journalists were among at least 35 people in El Salvador whose iPhones were hacked with Pegasus between July 2020 and November 2021, according to an analysis by the Toronto-based Citizen Lab and other groups. Also targeted were human rights activists and reporters for other news organizations. Some devices were penetrated a dozen or more times, the investigators said. Óscar Martínez, El Faro’s news editor, was hacked 42 times, they said. The digital news site is known for its hard-hitting investigations into the government of President Nayib Bukele.
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Citizen Lab analyzed forensic information from the victims’ phones in a joint investigation with digital rights group Access Now, and their conclusions were vetted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab. Citizen Lab found what it called “circumstantial evidence” that the hacks originated from Bukele’s government, but the attribution was not definitive. The government did not respond to an emailed request seeking comment. In a statement to the New York Times, the government denied responsibility and said it was not a client of the Israeli-based NSO Group, the creator of Pegasus.
The 40-year-old Bukele, a charismatic politician known for his leather jackets and Twitter salvos, won the presidency in a landslide in 2019 by presenting himself as a corruption-fighting outsider. He has grown steadily more authoritarian in office, dismissing Supreme Court rulings and attacking journalists. A senior U.S. diplomat, Jean Manes, expressed concern last year about a “decline in democracy” in the Central American country.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/12/salvador-pegasus-faro-nso/
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