According to the conspiracy theory of the liberal world press, the Hungarian government also used Pegasus, the spy software of the Israeli NSO Group, to hack the smartphones of critical journalists, opposition politicians and entrepreneurs. Among others, billionaire media magnate Zoltán Varga and his son Lajos Simicska were observed.

17 newsrooms - including the Washington Post, the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit a Le Monde - participated in the international investigation. They tried to reveal who they could have been watching with Pegasus, the spy program of the Israeli cyber company NSO. According to the fact-finding article of Direkt36, which is affiliated with Telex (!), critics of the Orbán government and Hungarian journalists could also be targeted at home.

The research was based on a database containing 50,000 phone numbers, which was accessed by the investigative journalist network called Forbidden Stories and the human rights organization Amnesty International.

According to Direkt36, several well-known Hungarian public figures were monitored with a spy program developed by an Israeli company called NSO for hacking and intercepting mobile phones. A leaked list includes the phone numbers of 50,000 targets worldwide.

Direkt36 notes that the fact that a phone number appears in the database does not necessarily mean that Pegasus was definitely used against the target persons and that their phones were hacked, but in many cases the subsequent examination of the phones proved that the NSO was indeed penetrated program into the devices, gaining access to even the most confidential information.

The Pegasus can only be sold by the NSO to other countries with the permission of the Israeli Ministry of Defense and could only be officially used against persons suspected of terrorism and organized crime. In contrast, the fact-finding project found that NSO clients in at least 10 countries are using it against journalists, human rights defenders, opposition politicians, lawyers and businessmen.

There could be more than 300 targets in Hungary, including two employees of Direkt36, whose phones were subsequently examined and it was found that their devices had been hacked with NSO software. (For Szabolcs Panyi, a journalist working at Direkt36, who was investigated by Amnesty International on his mobile device) But they could observe Zoltán Varga , the owner of the Centrál Media Group - who has long been under attack from government circles - as well as several other businessmen who attended a meeting at Varga's house at a social themed dinner in 2018. Lajos Simicska and one of his closest confidants, Csaba Ajtony Nagy could also be observed.

Based on investigations by an international fact-finding project led by Forbidden Stories, NSO's clients are typically authoritarian or corrupt states that have targeted journalists, human rights defenders, scientists, politicians, lawyers, businessmen and other civilians.

The screaming about the police state has begun

"Oppositionists and journalists are monitored and eavesdropped by the government!" - claims András Fekete-Győr on his Facebook page, and then adds: "It's an amazing story, but at least it confirms with evidence what everyone thought: Viktor Orbán is really building a police state."

In relation to the case, opposition politicians János Stummer (Jobbik), Zsolt Molnár (MSZP) and Péter Ungár (LMP) are initiating an extraordinary national security committee meeting. "(Viktor Orbán) has become so paranoid that he can install spy software on the phones of any of his citizens," Fekete-Győr concluded his post.

The government denies it in vain…

By the way, according to the paper, the government has already denied the wiretapping of Panyi's phone, explaining that they are not aware of any alleged data collection, and the software manufacturer NSO Group wrote that it does not have access to the data of its customers' targets and cast doubt on the significance of the leaked data. However, the story took on an independent life in the domestic media, thanks to independent, objective and, of course, extremely credible media, such as 444.

Source: Mandiner, Pestisrácok

Cover image: Illustration - Getty