Rights group verifies Polish senator was hacked with spyware

By VANESSA GERA
Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Amnesty International says it has independently confirmed that an Israeli company’s powerful spyware was used to hack a Polish senator when he was running the opposition’s 2019 parliamentary election campaign. The Associated Press reported last month that an internet watchdog group at the University of Toronto determined the senator and two other Polish government critics were hacked with the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. Dozens of high-profile cases of Pegasus abuse have been uncovered since 2015, many by a global media consortium last year, with the NSO Group malware employed against journalists, politicians, diplomats, lawyers and activists in several countries. The Polish hacks are considered particularly egregious because they occurred in a European Union country.