Pegasus was used in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict to target a government worker, a UN official, and others in 2021 and 2022, the first known use in a war
The Armenia spyware victims include a former Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia (the Ombudsperson) …
Context & Ripple Effects
This report extends Pegasus coverage from domestic political and civil-society targeting into an active interstate conflict. Earlier investigations documented its persistence in Mexico despite a public promise to stop, including Mexico's continued Pegasus use, and zero-click targeting of Mexican activists and reporters through 2021 using zero-click exploits.
It also fits a record of commercial spyware reaching politically sensitive targets across jurisdictions: a 2022 investigation found Pegasus and Candiru targets among Catalan figures and identified the HOMAGE iOS zero-click campaign against Catalan targets. The Armenia findings make the wartime context, rather than the underlying surveillance capability, the consequential new dimension.
First-order effects
- The named Armenian government, UN, and human-rights targets face a documented compromise risk, requiring device, account, and communications-security remediation.
- The finding adds a wartime use case to Pegasus's public record and raises scrutiny of the actors, procurement channels, and safeguards surrounding its deployment in this conflict.
Second-order effects
- Officials and civil-society organizations operating around the conflict must treat personal mobile devices as potential intelligence-collection points, increasing demand for forensic checks and more cautious communications practices.
- The report adds pressure on commercial-spyware vendors and exporting jurisdictions to show that controls can prevent tools sold for lawful purposes from being used against politically sensitive targets.
Third-order effects
- If comparable cases continue to emerge, commercial spyware will be assessed less as a domestic surveillance problem and more as a conflict-enabling capability, sharpening the case for cross-border deployment governance.
- The recurring use of zero-click tools against high-value targets suggests that meaningful oversight will depend on verifiable constraints and independent investigation, not customer assurances alone.
The trend: Commercial spyware is becoming a transnational security and governance issue as tools developed for targeted access appear across domestic repression, diplomatic targeting, and conflict settings.