Salvadoran journalists' phones hacked with spyware, report finds

[Judi Lynn]

January 12, 2022
8:20 PM CST
Last Updated 16 minutes ago

By Sarah Kinosian

5 minute read


SAN SALVADOR, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The cell phones of nearly three dozen journalists and activists in El Salvador, several of whom were investigating alleged state corruption, have been hacked since mid-2020 and implanted with sophisticated spyware typically available only to governments and law enforcement, a Canadian research institute said it has found.

The alleged hacks, which came amid an increasingly hostile environment in El Salvador for media and rights organizations under populist President Nayib Bukele, were discovered late last year by The Citizen Lab, which studies spyware at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. Human-rights group Amnesty International, which collaborated with Citizen Lab on the investigation, says it later confirmed a sample of Citizen Lab's findings through its own technology arm.

. . .

During the time of the purported infiltrations with Pegasus, El Faro reported extensively on scandals involving Bukele's government, including allegations that he was negotiating a financial deal with El Salvador’s violent street gangs to reduce the homicide rate to boost popular support for the president’s New Ideas party.

Bukele, who spars frequently with the press, publicly condemned El Faro's reporting on those purported talks as "ridiculous" and "false information" in a September 3, 2020 Twitter post.

More:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/salvadoran-journalists-phones-hacked-with-spyware-report-finds-2022-01-13/?rpc=401&



President Nayib Bukele

[Judi Lynn]

1. Exposed: civil society condemns use of Pegasus in El Salvador to spy on journalists and activists

12 JANUARY 2022 | 9:00 PM

We, the undersigned organizations, condemn the use of NSO Group’s Pegasus technology in El Salvador for the surveillance of journalists and civil society, as initially flagged by El Faro and Gato Encerrado, and confirmed through a joint investigation by Access Now, Front Line Defenders, The Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, Fundación Acceso, and SocialTIC. Although, to date, it has not been established who the perpetrator of this surveillance is, NSO Group has repeatedly claimed it only sells Pegasus technology to governments.

. . .

Infecting journalists’ and activists phones: what happened
In September 2021, a group of independent journalists got in touch with Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline after testing their devices using Amnesty International’s Mobile Verification Toolkit to detect Pegasus spyware. SocialTIC, a civil society organization working in digital technology, also referred cases to Front Line Defenders for their investigation. All the infections were confirmed through a forensic analysis by The Citizen Lab, and later independently confirmed by Amnesty International.

To date, 37 devices belonging to 35 individuals have been confirmed to be infected. Twenty three of those devices belong to professionals affiliated with the regional media group El Faro, and four to the national media group, Gato Encerrado. El Faro and Gato Encerrado are independent investigative outlets that have often published reporting that is critical of the Salvadoran government’s actions. Confirmed infected devices corresponding to other media outlets include: one device from staff of La Prensa Gráfica, one from Revista Digital Disruptiva, one from El Diario de Hoy, one from El Diario El Mundo, and two independent journalists. Confirmed infected devices corresponding to NGOs include: one from Cristosal, two from Fundación Democracia, Transparencia y Justicia (DTJ), and one from an NGO that wishes to remain anonymous.

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A bully State and president
Nayib Bukele’s hostile treatment of the media began early in his presidency, when, during the first months of his term, he generally avoided giving press conferences. Instead, he used his personal Twitter account to issue orders, fire public officials, and harass journalists, who he often arbitrarily categorizes as “political activists.”

More:
https://www.accessnow.org/pegasus-el-salvador-spyware-targets-journalists-statement/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Washington Post: Report: 22 journalists at Salvadoran news site hit with Pegasus hack

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5 min

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.

. . .

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.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/12/salvador-pegasus-faro-nso/