The leak was of a list of up to 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016. One of those targeted was Hanan Elatr, the wife of Saudi-born Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by a Saudi hit squad in 2018. NSO, a leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, has previously pledged to police for abuses of its software. It called the allegations exaggerated and baseless, according to The Washington Post, and would not confirm its clients' identities. Citizen Lab reported in December that dozens of journalists at Qatar's Al-Jazeera network had their mobile communications intercepted by sophisticated electronic surveillance.

Source: Daily Mail July 18, 2021 19:30 UTC