India was among several countries using an Israeli company’s spyware in attempted and successful hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials, and human rights activists around the world. At least one number once used by Prime Minister Imran Khan was on the India list, according to an investigation by 17 media organizations published on Sunday.The extent of the spyware – Pegasus – use was reported by The Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde, and other news outlets who collaborated on an investigation into a data leak.
According to The Post, more than 1,000 phone numbers in India appeared on the surveillance list while hundreds were from Pakistan, including the one PM Imran once used. However, The Post did not specify whether the surveillance attempt on PM Imran’s number was successful. Indian investigative news website The Wire reported that 300 mobile phone numbers used in India — including those of government ministers, opposition politicians, journalists, scientists, and rights activists — were on the list.
The numbers included those of more than 40 Indian journalists from major publications such as the Hindustan Times, The Hindu, and the Indian Express, as well as two founding editors of The Wire, it said. Reacting to the revelations, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said he was “extremely concerned” by the reports. “Unethical policies of Modi government have dangerously polarised India and the region,” he tweeted.
Federal Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari also addressed the development and said: “part two” of the report on how the Indian government had spied on its own ministers was expected today.
The Indian government denied in 2019 that it had used the malware to spy on its citizens after WhatsApp filed a lawsuit in the United States against NSO, the Israeli company producing the spyware, accusing it of using the messaging platform to conduct cyber espionage.
Israel’s NSO Group and its Pegasus malware have been in the headlines since at least 2016 when researchers accused it of helping spy on a dissident in the United Arab Emirates.
Sunday’s revelations raise privacy and rights concerns and reveal the far-reaching extent to which the private Israeli company’s software may be being misused by its clients internationally.
The leak was of a list of more than 50,000 smartphone numbers believed to have been identified as people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016, the media outlets said.
One of the organizations, The Washington Post, said the Pegasus spyware licensed by the NSO Group was also used to target phones belonging to two women close to Jamal Khashoggi, a Post columnist murdered at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018, before and after his death.
The Post said the list was shared with the news organizations by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, and Amnesty International. The newspaper said the total number of phones on the list that was actually targeted or surveilled was unknown.
The Post said 15,000 of the numbers on the list were in Mexico and included those of politicians, union representatives, journalists, and government critics.
The list reportedly included the number of a Mexican freelance journalist who was murdered at a carwash. His phone was never found, and it was not clear if it had been hacked.
The Guardian, another of the media outlets, said the investigation suggested “widespread and continuing abuse” of NSO’s hacking software, described as malware that infects smartphones to enable the extraction of messages, photos and emails; records calls and secretly activates microphones.
Among the numbers on the list are those of journalists for Agence France-Presse. The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, Radio Free Europe, Mediapart, El Pais, the Associated Press (AP), Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters and Voice of America, the Guardian said.
“We are deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists. Along with journalists from many news organizations, are among those who may have been targeted by Pegasus spyware,” said Director of AP Media Relations Lauren Easton.
“We have taken steps to ensure the security of our journalists’ devices and are investigating,” she added.
Reuters’ spokesman Dave Moran said, “Journalists must be allowed to report the news in the public interest without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are. We are aware of the report and are looking into the matter.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty International decried what it termed “the wholesale lack of regulation” of surveillance software.
“Until this company (NSO) and the industry as a whole can show it is capable of respecting human rights, there must be an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, and use of surveillance technology,” the rights group said in a statement.
The use of the Pegasus software to hack the phones of Al Jazeera reporters and a Moroccan journalist has been reported previously by Citizen Lab. A research center at the University of Toronto, and Amnesty International.
Pocket spy
The Post said the numbers on the rundown were unattributed. However, the news sources taking part in the venture had the option to recognize more than 1,000 people in over 50 nations.
They incorporated a few people from Middle Easterner imperial families. No less than 65 business leaders, 85 common freedoms activists, 189 columnists. And over 600 legislators and government authorities including heads of state, executives, and bureau priests.
The reports said numerous numbers on the rundown were grouped in 10 nations. Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the Assembled Bedouin Emirates.
Moroccan security administrations utilized the spyware to focus around 30 French columnists and media chiefs, as per the examination.
Pegasus is supposedly an exceptionally intrusive device that can turn on an objective’s telephone camera and receiver. Just as access information on the gadget, viably transforming a telephone into a pocket spy.
Now and again, it tends to be introduced without the need to fool a client into starting a download.
NSO gave a disavowal on Sunday that zeroed in on the report by Illegal Stories. Calling it “brimming with wrong suspicions and weak hypotheses”. And undermined a criticism claim.
“We solidly deny the bogus claims made in their report,” NSO said.
“As NSO has recently expressed. Our innovation was not related at all with the terrible homicide of Jamal Khashoggi,” the organization said.
“We might want to underscore that NSO sells its advancements exclusively to law requirement and knowledge organizations of confirmed governments for the sole reason for saving lives through forestalling wrongdoing and fear acts,” it said.
Resident Lab detailed in December that around three dozen columnists at Qatar’s Al Jazeera network had their cell phones designated by Pegasus malware.
Reprieve Global detailed in June 2020 that Moroccan specialists utilized NSO’s Pegasus programming to embed spyware onto the cellphone of Omar Radi. A writer was sentenced over an online media post.
At that point, NSO disclosed to AFP that it was “profoundly grieved by the claims” and was checking on the data.
Established in 2010 by Israelis Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, NSO Gathering is situated in the Israeli hello-tech center point of Herzliya, close to Tel Aviv. It says it utilizes many peoples in Israel and throughout the planet.
