India has reportedly used Israeli spyware called ‘Pegasus’ to in its attempt to hack PM Imran Khan’s cellphone.
As reported by The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde and various other media publications/outlets, Israeli spyware called ‘Pegasus’ has been used to target various notable personalities, journalists, political figures and national leaders around the world.
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According to The Washington Post, more than 1,000 phone numbers in India appeared on the surveillance list while hundreds were from Pakistan, including the one PM Khan once used.
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.
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 (UAE).
The leak consists of more than 50,000 smartphone numbers believed to have been identified as connected to people of interest by NSO clients since 2016, the news outlets reported, although it was unclear how many devices were actually targeted or surveilled.
On the list were 15,000 numbers in Mexico — among them reportedly a number linked to a murdered reporter — and 300 in India, including politicians and prominent journalists. The Washington Post stated that India was one of the 10 countries listed as a client of the Pegasus malware.
Israel’s Haaretz reported on Monday that India targeted a phone which was earlier in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s use, through the malware. Several Pakistani officials, Kashmiri freedom fighters, Indian Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, an Indian supreme court judge were also targeted
Separately, the Israeli spyware has also been used to target journalists for Agence France-Presse, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, El Pais, the Associated Press, Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, and Reuters.
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting – Fawad Chaudhry and Federal Human Rights Minister – Shireen Mazari have expressed concern on Indian attempt of hacking PM Imran Khan’s cellphone.
What is Pegasus Spyware?
Pegasus is a spyware developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group that can be covertly installed on mobile phones (and other devices) running most versions of iOS and Android. The 2021 Project Pegasus revelations suggest that current Pegasus software is able to exploit all recent iOS versions up to iOS 14.6.
Pegasus not only enables the keystroke monitoring of all communications from a phone (texts, emails, web searches) but it also enables phone call and location tracking, while also permitting NSO Group to hijack both the mobile phone’s microphone and camera, thus turning it into a constant surveillance device
Pegasus is a highly invasive tool that can switch on a target’s phone camera and microphone, as well as access data on the device, effectively turning a phone into a pocket spy. In some cases, it can be installed without the need to trick a user into initiating a download.
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 centre at the University of Toronto, and Amnesty International.
Pegasus was discovered in August 2018 after a failed attempt at installing it on anbilities, and the security vulnerabilities it exploited. As of 2016, Pegasus was capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, tracking location, accessing the target device’s microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps. News of the spyware caused significant media coverage.
It was called the “most sophisticated” smartphone attack ever, and was the first time that a malicious remote exploit using jailbreak to gain unrestricted access to an iPhone had been detected.
The spyware can be installed on devices running certain versions of iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, as well as some Android devices. Rather than being a specific exploit, Pegasus is a suite of exploits which uses many vulnerabilities in the system. Infection vectors include clicking links, the Photos app, the Apple Music app, and iMessage.
Some of the exploits Pegasus uses are zero-click—that is, they can run without any interaction from the victim. Once installed, Pegasus has been reported to be able to run arbitrary code, extract contacts, call logs, messages, photos, web browsing history, settings, as well as gather information from apps including but not limited to communications apps iMessage, Gmail, Viber, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Skype.
