His name is added to those of many politicians, activists and journalists. According to information obtained by several media including franceinfo, The world and Mediapart, Arnaud Montebourg’s mobile phone was infected in 2019 with Pegasus spyware.
Developed by the Israeli IT company NSO Group and at the heart of a global cyber-surveillance case revealed a few months ago, this software can access and recover a lot of data present in smartphones, and even activate a microphone or a camera without its owner realizes it.
Analyzes carried out after suspicions on the part of Arnaud Montebourg
According to Project Pegasus, recent analyzes carried out on the phone of the former minister of François Hollande showed that he too had been spied on in September 2019. The markers of attacks would be, as for other journalists, lawyers and men spied on politicians, linked to Morocco.
These analyzes were carried out after Arnaud Montebourg filed a complaint against X last December, suspicious of the many malfunctions he was then encountering with his telephone (dropped calls, etc.).
Arnaud Montebourg assures that he “has no explanation to give for this illegal surveillance”. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to understand them,” he told Project Pegasus media. The one who has just withdrawn from the race for the presidential election adds that he wishes “to know the sponsors” of this “extremely serious intrusion” and “of this industrial espionage of high technological scope”.
Morocco denies, for its part, having “acquired, owned or used the software marketed by the company NSO”.