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Pegasus review: Terrifying exposé of the world's most powerful spyware

From French president Emmanuel Macron to ordinary whistle-blowers, the surveillance software Pegasus has been used to target thousands of people. Investigative journalists Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud tell its story and explain why no one is safe

By Simon Ings

1 February 2023

2A7XK59 Lisbon, Portugal. 4th Nov, 2019. Edward Snowden, former intelligence officer who served the CIA, NSA, and DIA for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and cyber security, speaks from Russia to the audience for an interview by James Ball, during the annual Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon. Credit: Henrique Casinhas/SOPA Images/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden

Henrique Casinhas/SOPA Images/ZUMA Wire/Alamy

Pegasus

Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud (Macmillan)

EDWARD SNOWDEN’s 2013 leaks from the US National Security Agency triggered a global debate around state surveillance – but even he couldn’t quite believe the scale of the story described to him in the summer of 2021.

Whistle-blowers had handed French investigative journalists Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud a list of 50,000 phone numbers. These belonged to people flagged for attack by a cybersurveillance software package called Pegasus.

The investigation that followed is the subject of Pegasus: The story of the …

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