Member of European Parliament targeted by spyware

Daniel Freund, a German member of the Greens/European Free Alliance in the European Parliament, says he was targeted by a sophisticated surveillance tool two weeks before the EU elections.

On May 27, Freund received an email from a person who pretended to be a female student at Kyiv International University. She claimed she was hosting a seminar about Ukraine’s chances of joining the EU and invited Freud to write ‘a short message’.

To submit his story, Freund had to click a link in the email. Before he could do that, the Parliament alerted him that the link contained spyware likely made by the Israeli company Candiru. Otherwise, the attackers would have had full access to his device.

“I would have been under complete surveillance. My phone goes pretty much everywhere I go, and they would have been able to trace, to listen, to follow anything I do,” Freund told Politico, the news outlet that first reported the news.

Who’s behind the attack remains a mystery. A spokesperson told Politico that there’s no indication of where the espionage operation originated. The female who allegedly wrote the message said that she didn’t know Freud and the email didn’t come from her.

What we do know is that Freund is rather vocal on transparency and integrity issues in Brussels and that he’s a critic of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán. In a post on X, Freund says numerous countries are suspected of using Candiru, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Hungary. “Make a guess.”

“I’m not saying it was Hungary, but out of the possibilities, this is what seems most likely,” he told Politico.

Spyware has long been used to eavesdrop on government officials, journalists and human rights activists. There have been incidents from Catalonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Spain and other countries where politicians fell victim to espionage campaigns.

Spyware is able to collect all sorts of private and sensitive information, including digital correspondence, documents, photos, videos, location data, and phone numbers. Some spyware can also record phone calls, tap a smartphone’s microphone, take screenshots, and secretly take and send photos and videos to a command and control server.