NSO Group’s spyware targets human rights activists in Morocco

Amnesty International has reported digital attacks in Morocco undertaken by NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. The attacks work through SMS messages carrying malicious links. When the links are clicked on, the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware is installed. Since 2017, the attacks have been targeting two prominent Moroccan human rights defenders; Maati Monjib, an academic and freedom of expression activist, and Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, a human rights lawyer involved in the legal defence of protestors in a social justice movement in Hirak El-Rif that took place in 2016 and 2017. The research also unveiled network injection attacks against a human rights defender’s mobile network between March and July 2019, which aimed at installing spyware which could be attributed to the NSO Group in order to reportedly clamp down on opposition.