According to reports, the phone numbers of Indian ministers, opposition leaders, and journalists were discovered on a database of hacking targets that used the Israeli spyware ‘Pegasus,’ which is available only to governments. The database includes over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two ministers in the Narendra Modi government, as well as current and former heads and officials of security organizations and several businesspeople. The names of those in the database will be released in the coming days.
One of the numbers registered was in the name of a sitting Supreme Court judge, according to the source, which added that it had yet to confirm whether the judge was still using the number. The majority of the names were targeted between 2018 and 2019, in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha general elections, according to the data, but there was insufficient evidence to suggest that all phones had been hacked.
The Israeli company NSO Group, which sells Pegasus, has denied the allegations, claiming that it offers its spyware only to ‘veiled governments’ and said it was ‘considering a lawsuit for defamation’.
However, the Indian government denies any involvement in the hacking, stating that ‘the allegations regarding government surveillance on specific individuals have no concrete basis or truth related to it.’
According to The Wire, in an old answer to a right to information (RTI) request, the government responded by saying ‘there has been no unauthorized interception by government agencies,’ but did not explicitly deny the purchase or use of Pegasus spyware. A forensic analysis of some phones linked to the target numbers revealed clear signs of Pegasus spyware targeting – a task made easier if the devices were Apple iPhones.
The report on the spying scandal is based on a leaked database that was shared with several publications around the world for a collaborative investigation by the Paris-based media non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.
The majority of numbers identified in the list were clustered in ten countries: India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to The Wire.
Post Your Comments