Telephone numbers of some 40 Indian journalists figure in a “leaked list of potential targets for surveillance” and forensic tests were said to have “confirmed that some of them were successfully snooped upon by an unidentified agency using Pegasus software”, The Wire, an independent news website, reported on Sunday night.
The report published by The Wire, said that the ‘leaked data includes the numbers of top journalists at big media houses like the Hindustan Times, including executive editor Shishir Gupta, India Today, Network18, The Hindu and Indian Express’.
The leaked list of names was provided to The Wire and 15 other international news organisations by France-based media non-profit, Forbidden Stories, and Amnesty International, as part of a collaborative investigation called the ‘Pegasus Project’.
Not the first time
This is the second time that Pegasus has been linked to phone surveillance. In 2019, some WhatsApp users in India, including journalists and activists, were informed that their phones had been compromised.
According to the report, Pegasus and WhatsApp hacks were used in India by a group calling itself Ganges to target journalists and activists. The targeting by Ganges had “political themes”.
What is Pegasus?
Pegasus is software produced by the Israeli surveillance firm, the NSO Group. Pegasus sends a malware link to the target user and once the user clicks on it, the code that allows the surveillance is installed on the person’s phone.
According to Citizen’s Lab, once Pegasus is installed and the phone is exploited, the attacker has complete access to the target user’s phone.
It then begins contacting the operator’s command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators’ commands, and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps. The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity.
