The case reached media spotlight when opposition politician
Nikos Androulakis revealed in July 2022 that there was an attempted hack of his mobile phone. At that point two journalists, Thanassis Koukakis and Stavros Michaloudis, had already made similar accusations. The mobile phones of all three individuals were hacked with the illegal software called
Predator, although it was only successfully installed on the journalists' phones. The revelations were followed by the resignations of the head of the
NIS, Panagiotis Kontoleon, and the General Secretary of the Prime Minister and his nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis. Financial journalist Thanasis Koukakis who had previously investigated the Greek banking sector, heard from a government source that he was being surveilled by the Greek secret service. It was later discovered the violation of the privacy of his communications through the Predator software that had infected his mobile phone, and that this happened at the request of foreign services. A few days later,
EFSYN published an investigation linking the then General Secretary of the Prime Minister, Grigoris Dimitriadis, to the company that supplies the predator software in Greece. On 5 August 2022, Dimitriadis resigned from the position of General Secretary to the Prime Minister. Less than an hour later, Panagiotis Kontoleon, the leader of the NIS also resigned. On Monday, 8 August, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a brief statement on the issue of wiretappings, issuing that he did not know about the wiretapping of Androulakis and that if he had known, he would not have allowed it to happen. The opposition claimed that it was impossible that Mitsotakis did not know as NIS is under his supervision. A commission of inquiry was later upvoted after the proposal was submitted by PASOK. The proceedings lasted less than a month with the inquiry ending in a stalemate, with the government considering the issue closed and no evidence published about the use of Predator. However, in November more names were revealed to be involved in the list of targeted individuals. On 8 December, Mitsotakis ardently refuted in parliament the allegations that he could have ordered a surveillance of the Minister of Labour
Kostis Hatzidakis, or of the Chief of the Hellenic Armed Forces,
Konstantinos Floros. When asked if it is possible that departments under his personal control could have ordered it, with him claiming ignorance, he left parliament without answering. On 16 December, it was revealed that ADAE, a Greek independent authority safeguarding the privacy of telecommunications, had confirmed the surveillance of MEP
Giorgos Kyrtsos and investigative journalist
Tasos Telloglou after carrying out an audit. On 24 January 2023, responding to a question by
Alexis Tsipras regarding six specific individuals, including
Kostis Hatzidakis and
Konstantinos Floros, ADAE officially confirmed that all of them had been under surveillance by the
National Intelligence Service, a department under Mitsotakis' direct control.
Hacking of Artemis Seaford According to
The New York Times, Greece's national intelligence agency allegedly wiretapped and hacked the phone of Artemis Seaford, a former security policy manager at
Meta. Seaford worked for Meta from 2020 to 2022 and was surveilled using the Predator spyware while living partly in Greece. Seaford was made aware of the possible hack when her name appeared on the leaked list of spyware targets in November 2022. Cybersecurity researchers at Citizen Lab confirmed that Predator infected her phone for at least two months starting in September 2021. Seaford was also reportedly wiretapped for a year. This constituted further indication that the NIS was using the spyware, as it is yet another case of "double" spying using both hacking and the legal wiretapping tools in conjunction. Moreover, the SMS containing the link that was used to infect the victim's phone used accurate data about the victim's vaccination appointments. Seaford stated that she does not know why the government would target her, as the hacking remains unexplained and NIS has refused to provide evidence.
Distribution of Predator In November 2022, the Greek Foreign Ministry provided documents about its role in exporting Predator to foreign countries, despite earlier claims that the government had no relations with the company selling the spyware. After the outbreak of
clashes in Sudan and relevant accusations by the opposition, Greek Alternate Foreign Minister
Miltiadis Varvitsiotis admitted that the government gave an export license for supplying the Sudanese government with the Predator spyware. == International attention ==