The Biden administration is welcoming six new countries to a US-led pact to crack down on phone-hacking spyware as US officials tell CNN that the administration continues to find new cases of American government personnel being targeted by a technology that is deemed a national security and counterintelligence threat.
“We are aggressively and intensively trying to identity and confirm more” cases of US government personnel whose phones have been targeted with commercially available spyware, a US National Security Council official told CNN.
A year ago, the Biden administration put the tally of US government personnel either suspected of or confirmed to have been targeted by spyware at 50. It has since grown, the NSC official said, declining to quantify the growth in cases while saying that the counterintelligence and national security risks from the technology remain high.
Spyware is malicious software that is used to break into mobile phones, turning them into a listening device and scooping up their contacts. The market for commercial spyware has exploded over the last decade as companies from Israel to North Macedonia have hawked their services and many governments have been willing buyers.
A key prong of the US strategy to combat spyware has been trying to convince its allies not to do business with spyware companies whose tools might be used against US diplomats or to surveil dissidents and journalists on US soil.
Poland and Ireland — two countries that have allegedly had a role in spyware abuse in the past — are among the new signatories of the anti-spyware pact, a move that US officials are touting as a sign of growing global momentum to curb what has been rampant abuse of the surveillance technology. Poland’s prime minister has claimed the previous government used spyware…
Read the full article here
