Al Jazeera. The personal phone of a journalist at London-based
Al Araby TV was also hacked.
The phones were compromised using an exploit chain that we call
KISMET, which appears to involve an invisible zero-click exploit in iMessage. In July 2020, KISMET was a zero-day against at least iOS 13.5.1 and could hack Apple’s then-latest iPhone 11.
Based on logs from compromised phones, we believe that NSO Group customers also successfully deployed KISMET or a related zero-click, zero-day exploit between October and December 2019.
The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator
MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator