A Spy in the House of Investigators
In a startling revelation, Stelios Kouloglou, a former member of the European Parliament and a Greek investigative journalist, had his iPhone repeatedly hacked with Pegasus spyware during 2022 and 2023. This occurred while Kouloglou was actively serving on the European Parliament's PEGA Committee, a body specifically established to investigate the pervasive misuse of Pegasus and similar surveillance technologies. The timing of these intrusions, which coincided with key hearings and the drafting of the committee's reports, suggests a deliberate attempt to compromise the investigation itself.
The Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, conducted a forensic analysis of Kouloglou's device, confirming the presence of the sophisticated spyware. This marks the first public identification of a PEGA Committee member being targeted with spyware while actively investigating surveillance tool abuses. The attacks utilized "zero-click" vulnerabilities in Apple's software, meaning Kouloglou's phone was compromised silently without any interaction from him.