OVIEDO, Spain

The Spanish government on Monday announced that the phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles were attacked with Pegasus spyware.

“These are extremely serious events that confirm that there have been attacks from outside of government agencies and outside of the law,” said Presidency Minister Felix Bolanos in a press conference.

Bolanos said the attacks were confirmed by Spain’s National Cryptologic Center, which continues to investigate the phones of other Spanish politicians.

Sanchez’s phone was attacked with Pegasus twice in May 2021 and Roble’s phone once in June 2021, the government said.

Pegasus, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, allows hackers to access a target phone’s data and sensors including encrypted messages, data, texts, emails, photos, the camera and microphone.

Israel classifies Pegasus as a weapon, and it is only supposed to be licensed to states to fight crimes.

Bolanos said that the illegal use of Pegasus has been found in at least 20 other countries. Victims include politicians, journalists and other citizens.

The revelation that Spain’s top leader’s phone was hacked comes just two weeks after the research institution Citizen Lab revealed that the phones of at least 63 Catalan separatists were also attacked by Pegasus – the largest known cluster of infections to date.

Citizen Lab said the Spanish government could have been behind the mass espionage of the separatists, but was not able to confirm the attacker.

The Pegasus scandal has driven a wedge between separatist politicians and Madrid since it emerged.

Bolanos refused to speculate who may have been behind the attacks on Sanchez and Robles or what motivated the attackers.

On Monday, the government filed a formal request to investigate what happened.