Citizen Lab: PEGA Committee MEP hacked with NSO Group's Pegasus
On 5 July 2026, Citizen Lab reported that former Member of the European Parliament Stelios Kouloglou was repeatedly infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware while sitting on the European Parliament's PEGA Committee, which was set up to investigate spyware abuses.
What was found: Forensic analysis of Kouloglou's iPhone showed successful Pegasus infections on or around 21 October 2022 and again on 6–7 March 2023, coinciding with intense PEGA Committee deliberations, hearings and country visits. Citizen Lab assessed the device was hacked using the zero-click PWNYOURHOME exploit.
Why it matters: This is the first time a serving PEGA Committee member has been publicly identified as a Pegasus victim, potentially exposing confidential parliamentary proceedings to a party under the Committee's own investigation.
Attribution: Citizen Lab did not attribute the infections to a specific government, but noted an operator overlap with a prior Pegasus campaign against Russian- and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe, suggesting a customer licensed to operate across multiple EU jurisdictions. NSO Group has been on the US Commerce Department's Entity List since November 2021.
Read more: Citizen Lab
