Two female activists in Bahrain and Jordan hacked with NSO spyware

An investigation by the human rights group Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the digital rights non-profit group Access Now found that the mobile phones of Ebtisam al-Saegh, a Bahraini human rights defender, and Hala Ahed Deeb, who works with human rights and feminist groups in Jordan, had been hacked using NSO’s Pegasus spyware.

Both women said the discoveries, which were confirmed by security researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, felt like life-changing violations of their privacy, underscoring how such attacks against women were “particularly grievous” given how sensitive information could be weaponised against them.