EU lawmaker who investigated spyware abuse was hacked with Pegasus

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/07/Stelios-Kouloglou.avif

Stelios Kouloglou spent two years on the European Parliament committee set up to investigate governments spying on their own citizens with commercial hacking tools.

According to a report published Friday by Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto research group, his own phone was hacked with Pegasus spyware while that inquiry was under way.

Kouloglou, a Greek former MEP with the left-wing SYRIZA party, served as a substitute member of the PEGA committee, the parliamentary body formed in 2022 to examine the use of Pegasus and similar spyware across EU member states.

Citizen Lab found forensic evidence of three separate infections on his iPhone, one in October 2022 and two more in March 2023, while the committee was drafting its findings.

The spyware was Pegasus, made by Israel’s NSO Group, and Citizen Lab says it identified it with high confidence. The October 2022 infection landed while Kouloglou was in hospital...

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