"Top Hungarian Official Admits Government Bought Pegasus Spyware" 4 November 2021

A top official in Hungary's governing party has confirmed for the first time that the government had bought spyware that was allegedly used to monitor journalists, lawyers, businesspeople, and opposition figures in dozens of countries around the world...

[Israel’s NSO Group] became the center of controversy after an international media consortium reported in July that its Pegasus spyware was used in attempts to hack smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives, and officials in some 50 countries...

Smartphones infected with Pegasus enable operators to record phone calls, access text messages, photos, e-mails, and passwords, track GPS data, and secretly activate microphones and cameras...

The admission comes a day after the United States put the NSO Group on a trade blacklist, saying its software was behind the “transnational repression” carried out by some foreign governments...