This type of hacking grabbed headlines last week in connection with a forensic report commissioned by Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, that asserted with “medium to high confidence” that Mr. Bezos’ phone had been hacked after he received an encrypted video via WhatsApp from Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

Other technology researchers have questioned the report’s conclusions, but two United Nations experts gave it their stamp of approval, saying that the hack aimed to “influence, if not silence” The Post’s critical coverage of the kingdom.

The attempt on my phone, a month after the reported hack of Mr. Bezos, was less dramatic, but no less scary in its implications. An examination of my phone turned up no indications that it had been compromised, but technology researchers who inspected the message I received concluded that I was targeted with powerful software sold by NSO Group, an Israeli company, and deployed by hackers working for Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

When asked if its products had been used to target my phone, a spokesman for NSO Group said in a statement that it was “entirely deceptive” to suggest that its technology was responsible for all such phone hacking attempts, since other companies offered similar tools.

The researchers, at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, have in recent years identified 36 operators that have used NSO Group’s technology on hundreds of targets in 45 countries. These targets include four people whom the researchers were able to identify by name and could confirm were hacked by operators that appeared to be working for Saudi Arabia.