IANS & iNDICA NEWS BUREAU
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi allegedly used a spying software, Pegasus, on citizens — journalists, activists, Opposition politicians, government officials, business executives and more — according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners.
Pegasus, a military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals, was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to the investigation.
The Indians in the snooping database include over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving ministers in the Narendra Modi government, current and former heads and officials of security organisations and scores of businesspersons, The Wire, an Indian web publication that was part of the international media collaboration, reported.
We know what he’s been reading- everything on your phone!#Pegasus https://t.co/d6spyji5NA
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 19, 2021
The Indian government denied the allegations.
“Government of India’s response to a Right to Information application about the use of Pegasus has been prominently reported by the media and is in itself sufficient to counter any malicious claims about the alleged association between the Government of India and Pegasus,” IANS quioted Rajendra Kumar, additional secretary, electronics and information technology, as saying.
He stated that the questionnaire sent to the Government of India indicated that “the story being crafted is one that is not only bereft of facts but also founded in preconceived conclusions”.
Hey! Para 5 of the Govt's statement is so wrong & misleading. It refers to an RTI application, which I had filed. Govt claims it is "sufficient" to counter d allegations of links bw govt & #Pegasus.
FALSE. The RTI response to me neither confirmed nor denied the use of Pegasus. https://t.co/SxeZDbwrUJ
— Saurav Das (@OfficialSauravD) July 18, 2021
The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation by the international media collaboration found.
When Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founder of The Wire, an independent online outlet in India, learned that Security Lab’s analysis showed that his phone had been targeted and penetrated by Pegasus, his mind immediately ran through his sensitive sources.
He thought about a minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government who had displayed an unusual concern about surveillance when they met.
The minister first moved the meeting from one location to another at the last moment, then switched off his phone and told Varadarajan to do the same. Then “the two phones were put in a room and music was put on in that room… and I thought: ‘Boy, this guy is really paranoid. But maybe he was being sensible’,” Varadarajan said in a recent interview, the report said.
Pegasus is engineered to evade defenses on iPhones and Android devices and to leave few traces of its attack. Familiar privacy measures like strong passwords and encryption offer little help against Pegasus, which can attack phones without any warning to users. It can read anything on a device that a user can, while also stealing photos, recordings, location records, communications, passwords, call logs and social media posts. Spyware also can activate cameras and microphones for real-time surveillance.
The attack can begin in different ways. It can come from a malicious link in an SMS text message or an iMessage. In some cases, a user must click on the link to start the infection. In recent years, spyware companies have developed what they call “zero-click” attacks, which deliver spyware simply by sending a message to a user’s phone that produces no notification. Users do not even need to touch their phones for infections to begin.
Mexico was NSO’s first overseas client in 2011, less than a year after the firm was founded in Israel’s Silicon Valley, in northern Tel Aviv. In 2016 and 2017, more than 15,000 Mexicans appeared on the list examined by the media consortium, among them at least 25 reporters working for the country’s major media outlets, according to the records and interviews.
One of them was Carmen Aristegui, one of the most prominent investigative journalists in the country and a regular contributor to CNN. Aristegui, who is routinely threatened for exposing the corruption of Mexican politicians and cartels, was previously revealed as a Pegasus target in several media reports. At the time, she said in a recent interview, her producer was also targeted. The new records and forensics show that Pegasus links were detected on the phone of her personal assistant.
Today’s thriving international spyware industry dates back decades but got a boost after the unprecedented 2013 disclosure of highly classified National Security Agency documents by contractor Edward Snowden.
They revealed that the NSA could obtain the electronic communications of almost anyone because it had secret access to the transnational cables carrying Internet traffic worldwide and data from Internet companies such as Google and giant telecommunications companies such as AT&T.
