The mobile phones of at least twenty-five senior Pakistani defense and intelligence officials are reportedly being targeted by technology owned by Israeli spyware company NSO Group, a British newspaper reveals.
The alleged privacy breach was discovered during an analysis of 1,400 people whose phones were the focus of hacking attempts over a two-week period earlier this year, the report said, citing sources familiar with the matter who did not wish to be named.
The malware users exploited a vulnerability in the WhatsApp software to access messages and data on the targets' phones.
The discovery of the breach in May prompted WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, to file a lawsuit against Israeli spyware company NSO in October, accusing the company of “unauthorized access and misuse” of its services.
“The alleged targeting of Pakistani senior officials provides a first glimpse into how NSO’s “Pegasus” spyware could be used for “state-on-state” espionage,” the report states.
“This type of spyware is sold as designed for criminal investigations. But the open secret is that it ends up being used for political surveillance and government espionage,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, an academic research group at the University of Toronto, told the newspaper.
"While it is unclear who wants to target Pakistani government officials, the details are likely to fuel speculation that India could be using NSO technology for domestic and international surveillance," the report said.
“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is facing questions from human rights activists about whether it has purchased NSO technology after the emergence of 121 WhatsApp users in India who were allegedly targeted earlier this year.”.
India was first linked to NSO in 2018, when a report by Citizen Lab identified 36 Pegasus “operators” found to be using the malware in 45 countries. One operator, identified by Citizen Lab under the codename “Ganges,” was found to have been active since 2017 and has infected mobile phones in five locations: India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Hong Kong, and Pakistan.
