{ "id": "961ab667-c80a-41b7-8b3b-f600220a6f36", "created_at": "2026-04-06T00:21:40.558784Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T13:11:58.571832Z", "deleted_at": null, "sha1_hash": "6237b843b673c02430a6c2d3295797956058e197", "title": "The Pegasus Project: A worldwide collaboration to counter a global crime - Forbidden Stories", "llm_title": "", "authors": "", "file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "file_size": 35426, "plain_text": "The Pegasus Project: A worldwide collaboration to counter a global\r\ncrime - Forbidden Stories\r\nBy webmaster\r\nPublished: 2021-07-18 · Archived: 2026-04-05 20:01:05 UTC\r\nToday, for the first time in the history of modern spying, we are seeing the faces of the victims of targeted cyber-surveillance. This is a worldwide scandal – a global web of surveillance whose scope is without precedent.\r\nThe attack is invisible. Once “infected,” your phone becomes your worst enemy. From within your pocket, it\r\ninstantly betrays your secrets and delivers your private conversations, your personal photos, nearly everything\r\nabout you. This surveillance has dramatic and in some cases even life-threatening consequences for the ordinary\r\nmen and women who have been targeted for their work exposing the misdeeds of their rulers or defending the\r\nrights of their fellow citizens.\r\nAll of these individuals were targeted by states using the same spyware tool, “Pegasus,” sold by the NSO Group.\r\nOur mission at Forbidden Stories is to pursue – collaboratively – the work of threatened, jailed or assassinated\r\njournalists. For the Pegasus Project, we investigated this new threat against press freedom for months, working\r\nalongside more than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations.\r\nThis investigation began with enormous leak of documents that Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had\r\naccess to. In this list of more than 50,000 selected as targets by clients of NSO Group, we even found the names of\r\nsome of our colleagues, journalists we had worked with on past investigations.\r\nBut the scale of this scandal could only be uncovered by journalists around the world working together. By\r\nsharing access to this data with the other media organisations in the Forbidden Stories consortium, we were able to\r\ndevelop additional sources, collect hundreds of documents and put together the harrowing evidence of a\r\nsurveillance apparatus that has been wielded ferociously against large swaths of civil society – outside of all legal\r\nrestrictions.\r\nAmong the targets: human rights defenders, political opponents, lawyers, diplomats, and heads of state – not to\r\nmention almost 200 journalists from nearly two dozen countries. Some are local reporters, others renowned\r\ntelevision anchors. Many investigate corruption and political scandals that threaten the highest levels of power.\r\nMost already face censorship and intimidation. But few of them could have imagined having been the target of\r\nsuch an invisible and invasive form of surveillance.\r\nThe list of journalists hacked by Pegasus is long: award-winning Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova;\r\nreporter Szabolcs Panyi from Direkt36, an Hungarian investigative media outlet, freelance Morrocan journalist\r\nHicham Mansouri; the director of the French investigative site Mediapart Edwy Plenel; and the founders of the\r\nIndian independent media The Wire, one of the few news organizations in the country that does not rely on money\r\nfrom private business entities.\r\nhttps://forbiddenstories.org/the-pegasus-project-a-worldwide-collaboration-to-counter-a-global-crime/\r\nPage 1 of 2\n\nFor NSO Group’s government clients, Pegasus is the perfect weapon to “kill the story”. Invasive surveillance of\r\njournalists and activists is not simply an attack on those individuals – it is a way to deprive millions of citizens of\r\nindependent information about their own governments. When they hack a journalist’s phone, they are able to\r\nextract the most sensitive information that it holds. What was that journalist working on? Who are their sources?\r\nWhere are they stashing their documents? Who are their loved ones? What private information could be used to\r\nblackmail and defame them?\r\nJournalists have long thought that new technologies – the armada of encrypted communications that they rely on –\r\nwere their allies, critical blockades against censorship. With the existence of cyber surveillance tools as advanced\r\nas Pegasus, they have been brutally awoken to the fact that the greatest threats are hiding in the places they once\r\nthought to be the safest. The Pegasus Project poses important questions about the privatization of the surveillance\r\nindustry and the lack of global safeguards for everyday citizens.\r\nWhen a threat as large as this emerges, imperiling fundamental rights like the right to free speech, journalists need\r\nto come together. If one reporter is threatened or killed, another can take over and ensure that the story is not\r\nsilenced. Forty-five years ago, the first collaborative journalism project was launched after the murder of Don\r\nBolles, a journalist in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2018, Forbidden Stories coordinated the Daphne Project in the wake of\r\nthe assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta. We have continued to pursue the work of journalists who\r\nhave been murdered for their work – whether that was investigating environmental scandals or tracking Mexican\r\ndrug cartels – alongside dozens of news organizations.\r\nThe collaboration of journalists from around the world is without a doubt one of the best defenses against these\r\nviolent attacks on global democracy.\r\nSource: https://forbiddenstories.org/the-pegasus-project-a-worldwide-collaboration-to-counter-a-global-crime/\r\nhttps://forbiddenstories.org/the-pegasus-project-a-worldwide-collaboration-to-counter-a-global-crime/\r\nPage 2 of 2", "extraction_quality": 1, "language": "EN", "sources": [ "Malpedia" ], "origins": [ "web" ], "references": [ "https://forbiddenstories.org/the-pegasus-project-a-worldwide-collaboration-to-counter-a-global-crime/" ], "report_names": [ "the-pegasus-project-a-worldwide-collaboration-to-counter-a-global-crime" ], "threat_actors": [], "ts_created_at": 1775434900, "ts_updated_at": 1775826718, "ts_creation_date": 0, "ts_modification_date": 0, "files": { "pdf": "https://archive.orkl.eu/6237b843b673c02430a6c2d3295797956058e197.pdf", "text": "https://archive.orkl.eu/6237b843b673c02430a6c2d3295797956058e197.txt", "img": "https://archive.orkl.eu/6237b843b673c02430a6c2d3295797956058e197.jpg" } }