German parliamentarian urges officials to investigate Hungary for spyware abuse
A member of the European Parliament on Wednesday filed a complaint urging authorities to investigate Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for allegedly ordering the country’s secret service to break into his phone with spyware.
German parliamentarian Daniel Freund, a member of the Green party and a frequent critic of the Hungarian government, is asking a German state prosecutor and cybercrime law enforcement to investigate the incident.
In July 2024, Freund announced that his mobile phone had been targeted with Candiru spyware in May of that year. The spyware was delivered in an email from someone claiming to be a Ukrainian student.
Freund did not click on a link included in the email so his phone was not ultimately infected. At the time, Freund said he believed Orbán was responsible.
The German nonprofit the Society for Civil Rights, known as Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) in Germany, joined Freund in filing the complaint, which has not been made public.
“There are indications that the Hungarian secret service is behind the attack,” Freund and the nonprofit said in a statement.
The parliamentarian played a leading role in getting sanctions against Hungary passed by the European Parliament and Orbán has criticized him by name in the past.
“According to the EU Parliament's IT experts, the Hungarian government could be behind the wiretapping of my communications,” Freund said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “This comes as no surprise: Orbán despises democracy and the rule of law.”
“If the suspicion is confirmed, it would be an outrageous attack on the European Parliament,” he added.
Since April 2022, the parliament has conducted free checks of member phones in an effort to prevent spyware infections.
Traces of spyware were found on devices belonging to members of a parliament committee with a national security portfolio in February 2024, one of several instances of members being targeted with the surveillance technology.
Suzanne Smalley
is a reporter covering privacy, disinformation and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was previously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop and Reuters. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police Department for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington with her husband and three children.