Pegasus spyware targeted Indian journalists: Amnesty
- Amnesty International: Spyware targeted Indian journalists
- Apple warned opposition leaders in October of possible attack
- India's government has neither confirmed nor denied using technology
FILE – A logo adorns a wall on a branch of the Israeli NSO Group company, near the southern Israeli town of Sapir, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021. An internet watchdog said Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022, that dozens of journalists and human rights defenders in El Salvador had their cellphones repeatedly hacked with the Israeli firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
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(NewsNation) — Two prominent Indian journalists were among those recently targeted with the notorious Pegasus spyware on their iPhones, according to an investigation by Amnesty International.
The nonprofit advocacy group’s findings lend credibility to warnings from Apple, which notified multiple Indian opposition leaders back in October that they were possibly the target of state-sponsored iPhone attacks.
A forensic analysis conducted by Amnesty shows that traces of the Pegasus spyware were found on the phones of Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, the South Asia editor at The Organised Crime and Corruption Report Project.
“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, said in a news release.
Amnesty says it recovered evidence from Mangnale’s phone of a zero-click exploit that was sent via iMessage in August. A zero-click exploit enables spyware to be installed without the user having to perform an action, such as clicking a link.
The attempted targeting of Mangnale happened around the same time he was working on a story about alleged stock manipulation “by a large multinational conglomerate in India,” Amnesty said.
Varadarajan was targeted with the spyware Oct. 16. There’s no indication the attack was successful.
Pegasus is a spyware developed by the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group. The New York Times called it the “world’s most powerful cyberweapon” in a January 2022 investigation that detailed how governments around the world, including the United States, had abused the software to spy on journalists, activists and political dissidents.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in March banning the U.S. government from using it, but The New York Times reported a month later that it was still being used.
In India, the government has never confirmed nor denied using the tool, TechCrunch reported. However, officials from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party pressured Apple to help soften the political impact of the phone company’s warnings that were sent in October, the Washington Post reported.
