Senior European Parliament member targeted as spyware abuse spreads

As the number of politicians, activists and journalists hacked with spyware grew to include prime ministers and prominent dissidents in the European Union, the world’s biggest democratic club, the European Parliament in April started checking its members’ phones.

About 200 devices in, it hit its first positive.

A high-profile European Parliament deputy from Greece and leader of a major opposition party there was targeted with malicious spyware last year, an analysis of his phone by the Parliament’s technology experts revealed.

The politician, Nikos Androulakis, who became leader of Greece’s third-largest political party, the center-left PASOK-KINAL, at the end of last year, submitted his personal mobile device to the new spyware-detecting tech lab at the European Parliament in Brussels.