The French non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International published a data on Sunday to substantiate a collaborative investigation called the Pegasus Project, which shows that Israeli spy software Pegasus targeted several Indian activists, journalists, and political leaders. The investigation details were shared with Le Monde, The Guardian, Washington Post, Die Zeit, Suddeutsche Zeitung, The Wire, and several other media organisations from Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
Pegasus is a spy software created by an Israeli surveillance firm, the NSO group, and uses malware links to target a user’s device. Once the link is opened, the surveillance spyware is installed on the phone. Following this, the spyware sends private data, including passwords, contact lists, text messages, and live voice calls, to the operator’s command and control.
Among the Indians targeted were two ministers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, three opposition leaders, one constitutional authority, current and retired heads of security organisations, and 40 senior journalists and activists. The journalists included Shishir Gupta, the executive editor at Hindustan Times, and Siddharth Varadarajan and M.K Venu, the founding editors of The Wire, among others. The report stated that the spyware mainly targeted ten countries, including India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, the document enlisted 50,000 mobile numbers of individuals that were allegedly victimised by the hack. In this regard, The Wire reported that people associated with Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, including the two women closest to him, were also selected for surveillance.
The Print reported: “A leaked database of thousands of telephone numbers believed to have been listed by multiple government clients of an Israeli surveillance technology firm includes over 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including those used by ministers, opposition leaders, journalists, the legal community, businessmen, government officials, scientists, rights activists and others.” Following this, forensic tests showed that there were “clear signs of targeting” by the Pegasus spyware, only available to governments, in 10 Indian phones.
However, the Indian government has rejected the reports. The Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology statement said, “The allegations regarding government surveillance on specific people have no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever. Similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp by the Indian State in the past. Those reports also had no factual basis and were categorically denied by all parties, including WhatsApp in the Indian Supreme Court.” The statement mentioned that the government was committed to protecting personal data and was willing to address any queries about the issue.
Meanwhile, the NSO group also denied the allegations in the report and called them “a complete lie and ridiculous.” The group’s statement read, “After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their report. Their sources have supplied them with information that has no factual basis, as evident by the lack of supporting documentation for many of their claims.”
Concerningly, this is not the first such instance of Indians being targeted by the Pegasus. In 2018, a Canada-based organisation called The Citizen Lab said that the spyware was used to target Indian journalists and activists. In October 2019, WhatsApp also confirmed these allegations.