A new analysis has connected Israeli spyware to Khashoggi’s murder. According to new forensic research, operatives from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) planted the Israeli Pegasus spyware on the phone of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi‘s wife just months before his torture assassination.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the analysis, conducted by the Canada-based Citizen Lab privacy and security research lab, revealed that executives of Pegasus’ maker – NSO group – lied last summer when they claimed that Khashoggi and his associates, including his Emirati wife, Hanan Elatr, were targeted by the spyware in a surveillance operation on behalf of the UAE government.
A forensic assessment of two Elatr Android cellphones revealed that an unknown individual used one of the phones to visit a website that downloaded Israeli spyware into the phone, according to the report. Elatr’s phone was snatched by UAE security personnel at Dubai’s airport mere months before Khashoggi was murdered in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The Citizen Lab’s investigation revealed that the website was controlled by NSO Group on behalf of “a customer” in the UAE.
Elatr’s and Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz’s phone numbers were also discovered in a list of 50,000 numbers in a data dump that showed prospective Pegasus spyware targets, according to the report.
The list also includes the phone numbers of hundreds of other government leaders, including the presidents of France and South Africa, the Pakistani prime minister, and various US embassy officials stationed in Africa, as well as 180 journalists from major US and European news organizations.
New analysis connects Israeli spyware to Khashoggi’s murder. The purported data breach was part of a bigger investigation by a global consortium of news organizations. The Pegasus Project, as it was dubbed, uncovered widespread targeting of journalists, human rights campaigners, and politicians.
The international investigation showed that authoritarian countries have employed Pegasus against journalists, human rights advocates, diplomats, attorneys, and pro-democracy opposition leaders, according to the newspaper, with new disclosures continuing to emerge. On the phones of five of France’s ministers, signs of the malware were discovered. Hungary admits to using the spyware after initially denying it.
In a recent blog post from Project Zero, a Google security research division, the profound technical sophistication of spying exploits used by the Israeli spyware outfit was revealed. The post described a “zero-click” iMessage attack in which a victim’s smartphone could be hacked just by sending them an SMS message with a link, without the target having to open or read the message.
The NSO’s operations have been cloaked in secret for a long time. The US government has begun to take action against the Israeli business in the face of mounting evidence of its willingness to assist repressive and authoritarian regimes around the world, including the surveillance of some American officials.
According to the article, the Israeli military wants NSO to obtain its clearance before selling Pegasus to a country in order to assure that the sale is in the occupying regime’s best interests. Pegasus has been marketed to 60 government agencies in 40 nations, according to NSO.
The US Department of Commerce recently placed NSO on a blacklist, prohibiting US corporations from delivering goods or services to NSO. Even a group of US politicians has called for tougher sanctions against NSO Group and other spyware companies, including the freezing of bank accounts and prohibiting staff from flying to the US.
The United Arab Emirates, a federation of monarchies in the Persian Gulf, is one of NSO’s most well-known clients, according to the research. According to the worldwide media inquiry and others, the tyrannical administration has deployed Pegasus against anti-regime activists, journalists, and even a royal princess attempting to flee her father. NSO Group’s contract with the UAE was terminated in October after Dubai’s ruler used it to hack the phones of his ex-wife and her lawyer, a member of Britain’s House of Lords, according to a British court.
New analysis connects Israeli spyware to Khashoggi’s murder. The UAE has previously refuted allegations that it utilized Pegasus to target human rights advocates and other members of civil society.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates remains a close friend of Saudi Arabia. The two countries signed a mutual security pact in 2013 that promised intelligence and law enforcement cooperation. According to human rights organizations and a recent lawsuit filed on behalf of an imprisoned Saudi human rights activist in a US federal court in Portland, Oregon, the UAE has spied on Saudi dissidents overseas and sent them to Riyadh.
According to The Post, Elatr – Khashoggi’s fourth wife after his three divorces – feels forgotten in the wake of her husband’s murder. “She found out he had disappeared via Twitter after waking up from a long flight, alone in her apartment in Dubai. While she was dealing with the likelihood he had been murdered, she was also learning that he was planning to marry another woman.”
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s new fiancée, was waiting for him outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul at the time. He’d gone there to get a document that would allow him to marry her. Instead, he was assassinated with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s permission, according to US intelligence.
Elatr, on the other hand, has been battling for attention. Many of Khashoggi’s Washington friends were unaware of his June 2018 marriage to her in Virginia.
“Nobody knew her. Jamal had kept it a secret,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, a longtime human rights advocate and the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a Mideast-focused organization founded by Khashoggi. “I don’t know what was going on in his head.”
