2/ Two weeks ago we published an investigation showing a large-scale hacking operation using #Pegasus & Candiru spyware against Catalan political figures & civil society. catalonia.citizenlab.ca
3/ The Spanish government's response to our investigation was interesting.
After denials, smears & trolling it had just arrived at the rationalization / justification stage.👇
6/ Language from Spain* is interesting. They say #Pegasus hacking wasn't judicially authorized & was "external" / not officially done by state agencies.
OK, so who did this?
*pic: machine translation
7/ So many questions about 🇪🇸 Spain's #Pegasus revelations, like:
- Why announce today?
- What technical analysis backs their finds?
- When did they discover infections?
- What led to investigation?
- Are there other victims?
- Who else will be checked?
8/ 2.6gb, 130mb, 9mb. What could this data exfiltration contain?
Who knows. Ask Spain.
Some valuable things can be small (e.g. SMS databases & call logs).
Others, much larger.
Remember: #Pegasus can also steal cloud tokens. I wonder if Spain has checked account access logs?
9/ Investigating mercenary spyware like #Pegasus is hard.
Sometimes technical data & historic logs are incomplete.
A *comprehensive* investigation is needed to get a full picture.
Must include audits of all present/past Pegasus deployments in Spain & questioning all w/access.
10/ Spain has many questions to answer about today's revelations, *and* the Catalan case.
It's quite possible for a government to be both a victim in one #Pegasus incident, and the perpetrator in another.
The former doesn't justify the latter & shouldn't distract from it.
11/ UPDATE: a #Pegasus commission in Spain's congress was just vetoed.
Spain's #PegasusProblem is obviously serious. Clear answers are needed.
2/ Gaps in information during war are fertile soil for Russian dezinformatsia.
Part of what's so powerful about visual investigations & OSINT is that they accelerate truth & reduce the space Kremlin propagandists have to work with.
3/ Many OSINT techniques have genesis in past wars & crises. Some groups & visual investigations teams, too.
Yet there's a ton of exciting progress & maturing going on right now.
One key driver? Rapid hires satellite imagery like @maxar's daily releases.