Pegasus, the spy who undressed the Catalan independence movement

Pegasus, an espionage program that - in theory - only governments acquire and that could be used to penetrate the mobile phones of 50,000 activists, heads of state and journalists from 11 countries, was the tool of choice to attack the phones of three independentistas. Catalan leaders in 2019, an investigation by MRT and The Guardian revealed last year.

The then president of the Parliament and second Catalan authority, Roger Torrent, and the former minister Ernest Maragall, both from ERC, were the target of this malware marketed by the Israeli company NSO.

During the time that the President of Parliament's phone was attacked with Pegasus (2019), the independence leader participated in dozens of political rallies and testified before the Supreme Court in the trial of the procés. Torrent pointed out after the infection of his mobile to an organism "of the Spanish State".

Former CUP deputy Anna Gabriel, who fled to Switzerland in 2018 to avoid testifying in the 1-O court case, and Jordi Domingo, a member of the independent Catalan National Assembly (ANC), were also on the list of those attacked with Pegasus.

The system entered the guts of its terminals thanks to a WhatsApp security flaw that allowed a missed call to spread through the messaging application that required no response. Once inside, Pegasus allowed attackers to read encrypted messages, access the mobile's internal memory, and play encrypted conversations. Also, activate the camera and microphone remotely.

Conceived as an undetectable tool to prevent terrorism and organized crime, Pegasus is a program that can only be acquired by government agencies such as intelligence services, State security forces and bodies, and Armies.

Last year the Ministry of the Interior, the National Police and the Civil Guard refused to be NSO clients. The CNI, which refused to clarify to this newspaper if it intercepted the communications of the independence movement with Pegasus, has the program and has kept Catalan secessionism on its radar since in 2015 it created the Unit for the Defense of Constitutional Principles.

A Barcelona judge opened an investigation last October to clarify the assaults on the mobiles of Torrent and Maragall after a complaint filed by the latter against the former director of the CNI Félix Sanz Roldán and Grupo NSO.

Citizen Lab, a Canadian cybersecurity institute that investigated the security flaw that allowed Pegasus to sneak through WhatsApp in 1,400 terminals around the world, later considered that Torrent and Maragall were part of a group of 100 "members of civil society" - Journalists, activists and political opponents, arbitrarily attacked with the NSO cyber spy.